Bahama Pundit

Energy Issues for The Bahamas

by Larry Smith

Perhaps coincidentally, the government panel looking into fuel supplies will be reporting soon – just as rising prices are about to bite Bahamian consumers in the butt.

Oil prices surged past $75 a barrel last week, and analysts are forecasting $100-plus prices before the end of the year – up from just $20-30 per barrel a couple of years ago.

Experts say high oil prices are here to stay, due to soaring demand from fast-growing economies like China and India in the face of production limits. Our political leaders haven’t said so yet, but the clear message is that we will all have to find ways to adjust. The only question is whether the adjustment will be short and painful, or longer and easier.

It’s hard to say whether the Fuel Usage Committee’s report will be of any real help in this process. Odds are that it will simply repeat the tired old refrain of more government controls and an expanded public sector – after all, that’s what makes politicians happy. And even if some useful suggestions are made, we will still have to wait for our savvy politicians to act – which is a lot like getting your phone repaired by BTC.

Hubris and the Threat of Climate Change

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

While prudence, knowledge and intelligence can help humans to avoid many mistakes, they are no guarantee that we will not occasionally fall flat on our faces. We accept that as part of the human condition.

What is mystifying though is the ease with which we can sometimes dispense with these valuable tools and rely on other influences that almost inevitably result in bad decisions and varying degrees of ill consequences.

William Shakespeare put these words into the mouth of one of his characters: “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

It is fourteen hundred years later and humans have acquired great knowledge and achieved things that would astonish the bard. But he would find Puck’s words just as relevant today as when he first penned them, because the world is still swimming in a sea of folly.

It is not too difficult to understand how individual members of the species can be seduced by hubris, ideology, greed, stupidity and even misdirected faith.

Haitian Labour is Bad for The Bahamas

by Andrew Allen

It is interesting to note how, whenever a Minister of Immigration decides to do the job he’s being paid for and start making life hard for those illegally in the country, Bahamians all suddenly remember how vital Haitian labour is to our economy and society. The only problem with that argument (aside, of course, from its suspicious timing) is that it is totally wrong.

In fact, far from helping our economy, Haitian labour actually retards our workforce and economy in a number of ways, none of which are good for the long-term development of The Bahamas..

Granted, the effects of this retardation may be muted by the general success of the Bahamian economy over the last 75 years, but they are nonetheless very tangible.

Bahamas Bucks Gay Agenda

by Larry Smith

Pastor Lyall Bethel (of Grace Gospel Chapel) and others recently drew our attention to the "Homosexual Agenda" to take over the world.

After much research we were able to confirm that this master plan does exist. Here’s an excerpt from the document that we were able to pull down from a secret web site:

6am - Gym
8am - Breakfast (oatmeal and egg whites)
9am - Hair appointment
10am - Shopping
Noon - Brunch
2pm - Convert all straight youngsters to homosexuality, destroy all heterosexual marriages, establish a global chain of homo-breeding prisons where straight women are turned into artificially impregnated baby factories to produce prepubescent love slaves for the gay leadership, and secure total control of the Internet for the exclusive use of child pornographers.
2:30pm - 40 winks of beauty rest to prevent facial wrinkles from stress of world conquest
4pm - Cocktails
6pm - Light dinner (soup, salad. with Chardonnay)
8pm - Theatre
11pm - Bed (du jour)

Actually, Pastor Bethel’s remarks are not as silly as the above parody makes out. They are drawn from the strong views of powerful religious and social groups in the United States, led by conservative preachers like Jerry Falwell (of Moral Majority fame) and Pat Robertson (of the Christian Broadcasting Network).

Petty Politicians Annointed by God

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

The new Prime Minister of Jamaica, Portia Simpson Miller, stunned some of her countrymen just after she took office by announcing that she had been appointed by God and therefore Christians had a responsibility to support her.

Mrs. Simpson Miller did a tour of churches after being sworn in and, according to The Jamaica Gleamer, she got a particularly wild reception at one of them. When asked to address the congregation, Mrs. Simpson Miller said:

“If I am appointed by the Almighty to be Prime Minister, then all of you Christians must give support to the appointment of the Lord. If it is not done, the whip will not be drawn against me, because I am going to be carrying out His will.”

As astonishing as that may sound to some people, it is nothing new. Here in the Bahamas we have some politicians who believe they are appointed by God and that they are doing His will.

The US, The Bahamas, and UN Human Rights Reform

by Larry Smith

American embassy officials here are dabbling in a little public e-diplomacy these days.

Last week they scheduled the first ever digital videoconference between Nassau and Washington. Mark Lagon, the State Department’s point man for United Nations affairs, spoke with local reporters and college lecturers about human rights.

Renovating the UN has been a key goal of recent US administrations. Washington, which provides almost a quarter of the UN’s $10 billion annual budget (versus the Bahamas’ 0.013%) , says the 60-year-old organisation must “reform or die”.

And there’s no doubt – as Lagon acknowledged – that the UN benefits developing countries more than rich ones. So it is in the interest of most states to keep the world body effective in dealing with important issues like peacekeeping, human rights, humanitarian aid and economic growth.

According to Lagon, reform of the UN’s human rights system is a top priority for the US: “We wanted a more credible body, with higher standards for membership. One that is less subject to the whims of the world’s worst dictatorships.”

Bahamas Should Cultivate Tolerance

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

The idea of cruise ships bringing openly homosexual visitors to the Bahamas in recent years prompted some of our citizens, including a few religious leaders, to fly into an apoplectic rage. Rather ugly demonstrations greeted the so-called gay cruise passengers as they disembarked in Nassau.

In an attempt to cool passions and limit the damage done by negative publicity abroad in 1998, then Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham made a fairly exhaustive statement in which he assured his local and foreign audiences that:

“The Government of the Bahamas does not promote nor encourage homosexual lifestyles but neither does it condemn or exclude persons who reveal themselves to be homosexuals.”

Mr. Ingraham said he had been chilled by the vehemence of the expressions against gay persons. He admitted that there had also been expressions of reason and understanding but that these had been largely lost in a sea of bitter diatribe.

Haiti Gets Another Chance

by Larry Smith

In the words of one Haitian-American woman who remembers Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s election as Haiti’s first democratic president: "I went out there and was, like, screaming because I wanted him to be president. That was a risk, but I believed in him."

The 1990 election was a seminal event for Haiti, after almost two centuries of brutal dictatorships. But within a few months the army forced the new president into exile and unleashed another reign of terror, causing tens of thousands of poverty-stricken Haitians to flee to the Bahamas and the United States.

Critics blamed the Americans for Aristide’s overthrow because of his radical populist ideas, but he was recognised as president throughout his 21-month exile in Washington. And the US – fearing disorder and a continuing exodus of boat people – worked hard to put him back in office.

Before 1990, the United Nations had applied economic sanctions only twice, against Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa. But in 1993, prompted by the US, the UN imposed an embargo on Haiti, and authorized the use of all necessary means to facilitate the return of Aristide.

On Hate

by Nicolette Bethel

A band of youths barricade the small house in which a Haitian man lives, and set fire to it so that he burns to death inside. Two young men grab a third from a bar, take him out to the country, beat him with a pistol because he is a homosexual, and tie him to a fence post to die. A gang of Hutu citizens drag their Tutsi neighbours out of their houses, carry them to a nearby field, and chop them to death with machetes. A group of Arabs hijack planes and fly them into a pair of tall buildings full of Westerners just arriving for work.

These are all examples of the destructive nature of hate. I could go on, but I won’t, at least not for now. Instead, I want to talk about hate itself. I want to talk about it because in all our conversations — on the radio, in the newspapers, in the street, and, apparently, in the church — that is one thing that we don’t seem to talk about much. We say many things are taboo — homosexuality, godlessness, sin, and too much mixing with foreign elements for starters. The one thing we don’t seem to think is taboo is hate.

Bahamas Bans Brokeback Mountain

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

A half century ago – in December 1950, to be exact – the arbitrary banning of a movie by the Censorship Board caused an uproar in the Colony of the Bahama Islands and unleashed a chain of events that helped to change the social and political history of the country.

The movie, No Way Out, was about racism in America and featured black Bahamian actor Sidney Poitier in his first major role. It was a performance that launched the brilliant career of the 22-year-old from Cat Island.

Up to that time blacks were given mostly small and demeaning roles by Hollywood, so Sidney Poitier’s breakthrough also changed the history of American cinema. To his everlasting credit, Sir Sidney never accepted a role which conformed to the racist stereotypical image of black Americans.

The local Censorship Board, the white owners of the leading movie houses and the political establishment known as the Bay Street Boys regarded No Way Out as a dangerously inflammatory movie for a society in which blacks were routinely discriminated against socially, economically and politically.