Bahama Pundit

On the Boxing of Life

by Nicolette Bethel

It seems to me that in this society, we're very good at boxing. And no, I'm not talking about the Elisha Obed/Boston Blackie/Ray Minus kind of boxing here; I'm talking about the kind of boxing that creates neat little categories to fit things into and then proceeds to sort the messiness of life into those categories. We've got boxes for political affiliation, boxes for religious belief, boxes for skin colour, boxes for hair texture, boxes for work, boxes for home, boxes for school.

We're very good at separating stuff. We're not so good at putting stuff together.

Now it's not unusual that human beings categorize things. As human beings, we like to put things and people into groups. How we define our groups is what makes cultures different; what we consider to be fixed, immutable groups in The Bahamas, for instance, may be very different from what people in China or Zimbabwe or Jamaica consider to be fixed, immutable groups. Researchers have written very interesting papers on this habit, in fact; ask me about the bear and the barber sometime.

The Haitian Migration to the Bahamas

by Larry Smith

“Migration is an age-old response to different opportunities either within or across international borders, to be managed by governments as an opportunity, not solved as a problem. The ideal world is one where there are few migration barriers and enforcement expenditures, because there is little unwanted migration.”
2005 World Migration Report

The United States is pressing ahead with unpopular immigration reforms while our policymakers dither in the face of mounting antagonism towards illegal Haitians in the Bahamas.

In the US, the number of illegal immigrants has more or less tripled to an estimated 10 million since the last major reform of immigration laws. The 1986 reform sought to punish employers while giving amnesty to illegals. The current proposal calls for a guest worker programme, with incentives for migrants to return home when their contract expires.

“Reform must begin by confronting a basic fact of life and economics,” President George Bush said recently. “Some of the jobs being generated are jobs American citizens are not filling. Yet these jobs represent a tremendous opportunity for workers from abroad who want to work.

Americans - who are mostly the descendents of immigrants - have had a long-running and often incendiary debate over immigration, which parallels our own. And we should remember that every Bahamian is a descendent of immigrants.

The Prospects for Conch Farming

by Larry Smith

Five hundred years ago, the original Lucayan inhabitants of the Bahamas lived in a completely different world than the one we know today.

Early explorers told stories about flocks of parrots “darkening the sky”, of dense hardwood forests, and sea turtles keeping sailors awake by constantly knocking against ship hulls.

Seals and iguanas crowded the shorelines; lobster, conch and fish were abundant. Evidence for this are the large mounds of discarded conch and other shells and fish bones that are a feature of Lucayan archaeological sites.

And since slow-moving conch are found in shallow water, they became a staple food for the first European settlers - giving rise to their nickname, “conchs”, which persists to this day in the Florida Keys. In the Bahamas the sobriquet mutated into “conchy joe” - meaning a white or mixed-race Bahamian.

On Being Friends With America

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

For very obvious reasons the destiny of the Bahamas has been and will for the foreseeable future be inextricably linked with that of the United States of America. The US is our chief trading partner. Millions of Americans visit every year to experience our hospitality, our salubrious climate and our sparkling natural environment.

This trade has enabled the Bahamas to achieve and maintain a level of prosperity that is the envy of many other small and developing states.

Bahamians enjoy the advantages of living next to the greatest marketplace in the world. We import almost everything from the US and, on a per capita basis, more Bahamians visit America than any other nationality.

As a matter of fact there is that oft-repeated observation that Bahamians believe that going to Florida is their God-given right.

On Woodwork and Worms

by Nicolette Bethel

To every thing, says the writer of Ecclesiastes, there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.  He goes on to talk about being born and dying, planting and plucking up, killing and healing, breaking down and building up.  What he doesn't talk about, presumably because the writer of Ecclesiastes is generally assumed to have been King Solomon, who got his position from God and didn't have to worry about such things, is that there is a time to hold elections, and, alas, a time to campaign. 

And we have just about reached that time.  We're on the brink of that period when, to quote the inimitable Patrick Rahming,

They comin' out the woodwork just like worm,
Everybody catching politics like germ,
Chasing after sweetness just like fly;
Everybody know another five years done gone by.

Fixing Failed Bahamian Schools

by Larry Smith

Recently, a gaggle of experts met in Nassau to talk about fixing our failing education system.

The four-day conference last summer was a prelude to the draw-down of some $20 million from the Inter American Development Bank - to pay for more pre-schools and better technical education.

As the IADB says in its lending plan for the Bahamas: “The co-existence of acute skills shortages, notably in trades, and unemployment rates consistently above 7 per cent raise questions about the relevance of education, particularly for males.

Atlantis Revisited

by Larry Smith

Earlier this year, we reported the findings of one of the latest discoverers of Atlantis in the Bahamas.

A 23-year-old mechanic from Peterborough, Canada claimed to have found the concentric ring canal system of Atlantis just south of Andros by looking at satellite photos on the Internet (www.atlantisuncovered.com).

“It’s never been proven, so who's to say that I didn't find it,” he told Tough Call at the time.

An Abaconian Story

by Larry Smith

“The Island of Abaco is blessed with a good harbour, and is well secured by nature...(abounding) with timber.” 1783 loyalist advertisement circulated in New York.

MARSH HARBOUR, Abaco - Back in his early 20’s, a hardship post at a remote Bahamian logging camp seemed just as attractive to Dave Ralph as gauging streams for the US Geological Survey in Central Florida.

“I’d spend weeks by myself in the wilderness measuring water flow on the Suwanee and other rivers,” Ralph recalled. “Then one day in Ocala someone offered me a job in the Bahamas.”

The son of a New England preacher, Ralph jumped at the chance to move to a place he didn’t even know existed. And he has been there ever since – living in a steamboat cabin, a railroad car, a company shack, and finally his own little piece of paradise overlooking Marsh Harbour.

Discovering Atlantis in the Bahamas

by Larry Smith

Just last month, a 23-year-old mechanic from Peterborough, Canada discovered Atlantis in the Bahamas by looking at satellite photos on the Internet.

Chris Shearer (http://www.atlantisuncovered.com) says last year’s hurricanes shifted ocean sands south of Andros to expose the concentric ring canal system of Atlantis - for the first time in thousands of years.

“I was researching a TV show on the Bermuda Triangle,” he told Tough Call recently, “using the Nasa Earth Observatory (http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov) to look for planes or boats on the ocean floor. Crossing the Bahamas I saw what looked like the rings and canal I remembered from a show about Atlantis. It has never been proven, so who's to say I didn't find it!”

Chris is the latest of a phalanx of professional and amateur explorers who have located the lost city in just about every corner of the globe in the 123 years since Minnesota congressman Ignatius Donnely published his famous book, Atlantis: the Antediluvian World In 1882.

Back to the Future - Telecoms in the Bahamas

by Larry Smith

A few weeks ago, the government said it was in secret talks with an unidentified buyer to “re-start” the privatisation of the Bahamas Telecommunications Company.

Some say the mystery bidder is Cingular (formerly AT&T Wireless), America’s largest cell phone carrier. But Cingular is selling its regional licenses to focus exclusively on US business.

Cingular is selling to Digicel, an Irish company that is the region’s fastest-growing mobile operator. Digicel’s network will soon extend from Trinidad to Bermuda and from Haiti to the Cayman Islands – a total of 15 countries.

Digicel is also a GSM operator like BTC and wants to be a pan-regional mobile player. With revenues of $477 million last year, analysts say It is an agile company that targets small countries with pent-up demand to offer new services at competitive rates.

That’s a model that doesn’t seem to fit well with BTC’s senile business approach. And taking in the Bahamian telcom would be a huge management headache for the small number of new subscribers it would bring. But Digicel may think it worth the effort to establish a full regional network.

Put an End to Secret Government

By Larry Smith

A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives.
James Madison, fourth president of the United States.

The American Embassy flew in a Kent State University professor on Saturday for a seminar on newsgathering with local reporters at the British Colonial Hilton.

Topping the agenda was a panel discussion by Tribune columnist Sir Arthur Foulkes, Bahama Journal co-founder Mike Smith and Freeport News editor Oswald Brown.

Predictably, the biggest issue on everyone’s mind was public accountability and access to information.

As Sir Arthur noted, “it is impossible to have democracy without a free and competent press. But governments tend to promote a culture of secrecy.”

What The Bahamas Can Learn From Katrina

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

It is not unreasonable to assume that the website Bahamas Uncensored would reflect to a large degree the views of Fred Mitchell, Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Public Service. It used to be Fred Mitchell Uncensored before Mr. Mitchell became a minister in the PLP government.

If that is true then at least one minister in Prime Minister Perry Christie’s cabinet is thinking seriously about the lessons the Bahamas can learn from the destruction of the city of New Orleans and the devastation of the Gulf Coast states by hurricane Katrina. The September 11 edition of the site said:

“…What are the lessons that can be learned for the Bahamas, with a public administration that is broke and incompetent? What lessons is the National Emergency Management Agency learning from this? Where is the legislation that was promised to put NEMA on a legal footing, promised after last year’s ruinous storms? What happens if a category five storm hits New Providence? Does the Bahamas have the ability to evacuate its population from New Providence to some other safe haven in a short time? Can we make such arrangements with the United States? With some other neighbour? Will it be necessary ever to move all of our people out, just like the city of New Orleans? …”

Leaving aside for the moment the comment about “a public administration that is broke and incompetent,” these are indeed timely questions that will have occurred to other thoughtful people.

Hurricane Katrina has dramatically demonstrated that without a sustainable environment human beings have little else for their security and survival, not to mention prosperity.

Yet the ideological neoconservatives of the present US administration seem oblivious to this fact of life as they refuse to take America into the international consensus that radical steps need to be taken to save the global environment.

Bahamian Politics - Setting a New National Agenda

By Larry Smith

Tribune columnist Andrew Allen recently lamented the fact that the opposition Free National Movement presents no intellectual alternative to the Progressive Liberal party, which he described as our default political setting.

"That bodes ill for the party's chances of ever challenging the philosophical dominance of the PLP in Bahamian politics," he said. "PLPism continues to set the tone of political debate with the FNM simply reacting."

As in most of the Commonwealth Caribbean, the overwhelming success of the ethnically-based nationalist movement led by the PLP, actually retarded our political development. The hard-won credentials of those who helped end white colonial rule gave them virtually unchallenged authority.

Hard Choices for the Big Easy

By Larry Smith

"And every time we think about the bacon and the beans, we'll think about the fun we had way down in New Orleans."
Jimmy Driftwood

Why did Katrina trash New Orleans?

Well, it actually had nothing to do with either divine retribution or George Dubya, and everything to do with geography.

In fact, this was the most anticipated disaster in history. Officials have spent years planning for just such an event. And computer models developed at Louisiana State University and other institutions made detailed (and accurate) projections of what would happen in a major storm.

Ultimately, the havoc was caused by human impact on the area's natural ecosystems. New Orleans lies an average eight feet below sea level, spread over miles of flood plain in the Mississippi River delta. As a result, more than 80 per cent of this historic city was flooded by Hurricane Katrina.

The Truth About Petrocaribe

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

The picture has become much clearer now since Trade and Industry Minister Leslie Miller came back from a June meeting in Venezuela and announced that cheaper gasoline was on the way because of an agreement he had just signed.

The PetroCaribe agreement was “a dream come true”, the Minister gushed. It was an extraordinary achievement he had been working on for two and a half years and now the cheap oil could begin to flow because the agreement would take immediate effect.

In his inimitable fashion, Mr. Miller went about proclaiming deliverance from expensive gasoline and getting many Bahamians understandably excited in the process. With the same kind of demagoguery he indulged in over the LNG pipeline proposals, Mr. Miller with rash abandon put his cabinet colleagues on another hot spot.

Some people thought it was too good to be true (and it was) and waited in vain as weeks went by and there was no word of either confirmation or caution from the head of the government, Prime Minister Perry Christie.

New Orleans: Stricken & Neglected

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

Cities die. Some from old age and abandonment, some at the hands of nature and some by war.

Archaeologists have not yet been able to explain why the Mayans a thousand years ago abandoned Chichen Itza and other cities in what is now Mexico. Was it disease, political upheaval or superstitious anticipation of impending disaster?

In August 79 AD the volcano Vesuvius erupted and buried the Italian city of Pompeii. It remained embalmed in mud and ash for 15 hundred years and is now regarded as one of the most important archaeological sites in the world.

In August 1945 hell descended on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a fearsome new weapon incinerated both Japanese cities in seconds. Those who were consumed along with the cities were considered more fortunate than those who survived only to endure horrible affliction.

In August 2005 tropical hurricane Katrina roared in from the Gulf of Mexico wreaking havoc on the littoral states. Katrina’s most notable victim was New Orleans, one of the most interesting cities in America.