Bahama Pundit

Civil Servants, Politicians & Parliamentary Democracy in The Bahamas

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

The website Bahamas Uncensored, formerly Fred Mitchell Uncensored, frequently goes off the deep end in its commentaries and observations and some of it could be attributed to the inexperience and ignorance of its editors.

However, most people believe that Mr. Mitchell, now a Cabinet Minister, still contributes to the site or at least exerts considerable influence on its contents despite protestations that he is no longer associated with it.

There is nothing wrong with a politician who becomes a cabinet minister maintaining a site for his own political purposes except that he has to be careful that what is said by him or on his behalf does not conflict with the responsibilities and disciplines that go along with membership in the Cabinet.

So it is perhaps convenient for Mr. Mitchell to maintain the fiction of disassociation to avoid problems with his cabinet colleagues.

Nassau Redevelopment Appears Underway

by Larry Smith

"Nearly all the inhabitants...lived in the ramshackle township called Charles Town, just inside the harbour bar. A huddle of houses without real streets stretched from the waterfront to the...ridge. There was no fort or any public buildings save, perhaps, a small church...where the house called Greycliff was built much later." -- 17th century Nassau as portrayed in Islanders in the Stream by Gail Saunders and Michael Craton.

Driving through town from a trip out west recently was like navigating an obstacle course. The traffic is so chaotic it's a miracle that pedestrians are not slaughtered by the dozen.

Dowdy stores advertise cheap t-shirts to even cheaper cruise ship passengers - these days, hardly anyone else shops on the main drag, whose dirty sidewalks are infested with bums and street peddlers.

Incredibly, the straw market remains a gaping hole in the ground five years after it burned down, while vendors (this government's main constituency) swelter under a makeshift tent. Bay Street east of the Churchill Building has become a no-go zone of derelict shops and ugly freight terminals.

It is increasingly difficult to recall the Nassau that used to be - before the economic decline of the 1980s. Business and political leaders have been talking about reviving the city ever since then, but a tortuous drive through town will convince anyone that nothing much is happening. In fact, things seem only to be getting worse.

Violence and the Pronouncements of Bahamian Politicians

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

The fight in the Cabinet room between two Members of Parliament was a shameful episode in Bahamian politics, but it was also a great opportunity for Prime Minister Perry Christie to make an effective statement about the rising tide of violence which plagues Bahamian society.

Mr. Christie takes pride in his ability to communicate, and he is indeed one of our most articulate politicians ever. On this occasion he had the attention of the whole nation.

Everybody -- including many young Bahamians who are at risk of being seduced into a subculture of violence -- was waiting to hear what he had to say.

It was a chance for him publicly to lecture his offending colleagues on the unacceptability of violent behaviour. Keod Smith and Kenyatta Gibson should have made an immediate and unconditional apology and should have offered their resignations to the Prime Minister.

Bahamas Energy Policy to Focus on Security of Supply & Conservation

by Larry Smith

Apart from the fact that we are spending more money to sit in traffic these days, most of us have no idea how the world's rising energy demand will affect our lives. We are 'energy illiterate'.

But that may soon change. Energy & Environment Minister Dr Marcus Bethel expects to finalise the nation's first energy policy within weeks. And he says it will contain some "hard-hitting recommendations" to adapt our profligate lifestyles.

To understand just where things are, the last time the world was as concerned about energy as it is today was in 1973 - when the Arab embargo raised oil prices by 251 per cent and forced some big economic changes. Due to greater efficiency, Americans use 57 per cent less oil and gas per dollar of output today than they did in 1973, experts say.

But demand has only continued to grow, and within 20 years the world will use more than twice as much energy as it does today. That means oil demand will jump from the current 84.6 million barrels a day to 140 million, use of natural gas will climb by 120 per cent , and coal use by nearly 60 per cent.

There are three main factors driving the future of our energy economy: supply, cost and pollution. First, no-one is quite sure where all that energy will come from. Second, oil is subject to wild price swings and is increasingly dependent on unstable countries. Third, burning fossil fuels produces carbon emissions that are changing the world's climate, as well as polluting the air we breathe.

Nassau Institute on Wrong Side of Global Warming Issue

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

Corporate greed, callousness and dishonesty have brought untold suffering, disease and death to millions of humans all over the world. Perhaps the most egregious example of corporate abuse so far has been that of the tobacco industry.

Cigarettes have for years brought death and disease to millions who smoke and to millions more who suffer from passive smoking. The victims include innocent children and the unborn in their mothers’ wombs.

When it started to dawn on people that smoking was responsible for all kinds of afflictions, including cancer and heart disease, the tobacco companies went into denial overdrive with a torrent of lies. They covered up damning evidence and intensified advertising aimed at young people.

They spent hundreds of millions recruiting scientists, research organizations and policy institutions in an effort to convince the public that smoking was not bad, or not that bad, that in any event adults had a right to choose to smoke and that the government had no right to interfere.

North Korea and the History of the Bomb

by Larry Smith

By some accounts, Japan tested a small atomic bomb in North Korea during the final days of World War Two. And now, 61 years later, North Korea has tested its own bomb - making it the eighth country with confirmed nuclear weapons, and creating a big new problem for the world.

The background to North Korea's test can be traced to the discovery of nuclear fission in Europe in the 1930s, when two competing alliances began vying to build a super bomb. At the time, Britain and the United States were locked in a life and death struggle with Germany and Japan.

Japanese research began in 1940 under the direction of physicist Yoshio Nishina. And to escape Allied attacks the project was moved to a remote Japanese naval base in Korea, where some intelligence sources say prototype bombs were assembled, and one may actually have been tested.

German efforts were led by physicist Werner Heisenberg and produced a nuclear reactor that never worked. Although a number of other revolutionary weapons were produced - including the world's first jet fighter, stealth bomber and ballistic missile - analysts doubt that the Nazis ever came close to making a bomb.

But the British and Americans were convinced they had to have these decisive weapons to survive. So the Manhattan Project was launched in December, 1941. Fearing a Nazi victory, many leading scientists encouraged this research. They famously included Albert Einstein, who wrote to US President Franklin Roosevelt in 1939:

Politicians—the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

By Sir Arthur Foulkes

It may appear to some that this is a not a very good time to be speaking out in defence of the art and science of politics and to be saying anything good about politicians. Last week’s quote from The Economist about somebody putting something odd in the water in Central Europe could apply just as well in the West, including The Bahamas.

It is to be expected that in the United States, where mid-term congressional elections are to be held in a matter of weeks, the pot would be boiling, but there are any number of pots boiling, and furiously.

The American people are beginning to face up to the realization that there is something wrong with the war in Iraq and so, three years late, the US mass media are beginning to examine the possibility that the nation’s political leaders may have misled them into that misadventure.

A corrupt lobbying operation has been exposed with a number of politicians and others being badly tainted and some going to jail. This has caused many Americans once again to examine whether corporate influence has corrupted their government.

On top of all this, an American politician has served up to the media what they like best -- a sex scandal involving powerful or well-known people. They had a field day when US conservatives went after President Bill Clinton over a sexual encounter in the White House.

On the Dangers of Fundamentalism

by Larry Smith

"If you have suffered a defeat, so did the the enemy. We alternate these vicissitudes among mankind so that God may know the true believers and choose martyrs from among you; and that God may test the faithful and annihilate the infidels." -- The Koran (3:140).

"Most of what we currently hold sacred is not sacred for any reason other than that it was thought sacred yesterday. Surely, if we create the world anew, the practice of organising our lives around untestable propositions found in ancient literature—to say nothing of killing and dying for them— would be impossible to justify."-- Sam Harris, The End of Faith.

According to the pope, since Islam has attacked the West, Christians should destroy Muslims as the enemies of God.

Of course, it was not the recently anointed Pope Benedict XVI who made this call. It was Pope Urban II - about a thousand years ago when he launched the first crusade against the Turks and Arabs who had conquered the formerly Christian Middle East.

But Ayman al-Zawahiri, the top deputy to Osama bin Laden, was quick to compare the two: "This charlatan Benedict brings back to our memories the speech of his predecessor charlatan Urban II in the 11th century...in which he instigated Europeans to fight Muslims."

The al Quaeda leader was referring to a recent lecture by Pope Benedict on the subject of faith and reason. In it, the pope referred to a 14th century religious debate between Greek and Persian scholars. This conversation took place about 50 years before the Turks captured Constantinople - putting an end to Christian civilisation in the East.

In Families and Governments Things Sometimes Fall Apart

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

When the poet W. B. Yeats wrote his poem, The Second Coming, the world he surveyed looked quite gloomy and he was wondering if the end was near and some apocalyptic beast would soon appear.

Europe had just been ravaged by the Great War and was still in a state of turmoil, facing the threats of Communism in the East and Fascism in the West. The slouching beast with “a gaze blank and pitiless as the sun” never came, but the same year Yeats died, Europe was plunged into the even more destructive World War II.

Nearly 40 years after the death of the Irish poet, an African writer, Chinua Achebe, looked to this poem for the title of what was to be a spectacularly successful African novel, Things Fall Apart. It has sold millions of copies and has been translated into 50 languages.

Not everything falls apart, of course, although the human condition seems to have a built-in programme for that outcome. Sometimes things can be prevented from falling apart; history and everyday life are full of examples where wisdom and will can prevail.