Bahama Pundit

Does the War on Drugs Make Sense?

by Larry Smith

Last week's article on the baggage handler controversy drew calls from some readers for the legalisation of drugs - which may not be as crazy as it first sounds.

Today's moralistic attitude towards drug use developed in the late 19th century, when religious reformers pushed for a law enforcement approach to what previously had been a matter of personal choice.

These crusaders were able to criminalise the possession of opium and its derivatives morphine and heroin, as well as cocaine, around the time of the First World War, with cannabis following soon after.

Before then opiates were freely available in Western societies, both on their own and as an unregulated ingredient in tonics and medicines. Morphine was a popular painkiller, heroin was produced by Bayer in 1895 as a "safe" cough remedy, and cocaine was an early ingredient in Coca Cola.

Cleaning up the Bahamian Political Process

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

A Tribune editorial last week quoted someone as saying that Bahamian voters have to be weaned away from the idea that every five years is a one-day bonanza for them as they figure out what they can get out of a candidate for themselves.

The Tribune was commenting on a suggestion by Foreign Affairs and Public Service Minister Fred Mitchell who had earlier suggested that both parties get together to put a cap on election spending. This is a good idea but not a new one. It usually comes up around election time but is quickly forgotten afterwards.

It is too late to do anything for this year’s election but perhaps the time has come for both parties to agree to do something soon after to control election spending. That would be a good thing for the parties, for politicians and for the country.

Arrest of Bahamian Bag Handlers in Florida Creates Political Firestorm in Nassau

by Larry Smith

"This is a different era. It's a different mindset. Today, we cloak our children in wrongdoing." -- National Security Minister Cynthia Pratt.

The arrest of five Nassau airport baggage handlers in Florida last month unleashed a storm of self-righteous protest among Bahamians. And - with an election in the offing - opposition politicos are having a field day.

They accuse the government of "colluding" in an "extra-judicial rendition" of unsuspecting Bahamians to imprisonment in another country. Some go so far as to say the men were officially kidnapped.

By this account, the unwitting baggage handlers were "tricked" into traveling to the US as part of an elaborate scheme to circumvent their right of due process under Bahamian law.

All of the cabinet ministers who would logically be in a position to know what happened have been put on the defensive and have denied any foreknowledge.

They include Cynthia Pratt (who oversees the police), Fred Mitchell (who handles foreign relations), and Allyson Gibson (who is responsible for prosecutions). Mitchell also said that Glenys Hanna-Martin (who is in charge of the airport) had no prior information, and neither did the managers of Nassau Flight Services, who employed the unfortunate bag men.

But the opposition insists otherwise. They say that Bahamian suspects should not be enticed to travel abroad to facilitate their arrest and prosecution by foreigners: "Somebody is lying. There is more to this than meets the eye," one political source told Tough Call.

Is History of Government Neglect Repeating Itself in the Bahamas?

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

“Prime Minister, the country is going straight to hell, and I am not aware that anybody is doing anything about it.”

That was an opening statement by a perceptive and worried PLP Cabinet Minister as the party’s parliamentarians huddled in a garret at the Stokes Thompson Cabana on South Beach in November 1970.

For months the Minister had been muttering much the same to anyone who would listen. This time he directed his complaint directly at Prime Minister Lynden Pindling in a conclave convened by Anthony Roberts.

In the country many were still in a state of euphoria following the change in January 1967 and the massive consolidation of PLP power in 1968. The economy was doing fine, there was high employment and some positive changes were taking place.

More Leadership - Not More Oil - Needed to Transform the Energy Economy

by Larry Smith

“I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.” -- Thomas Edison in 1931, the year he died.

Well, many experts argue that - while there is still a lot of coal in the ground - oil is becoming a problem, with most reserves now held by state companies in politically unstable regions.

And oil is what runs our economy, which is why energy concerns are expected to be a central theme of President George W Bush's State of the Union address next week.

According to Al Hubbard, the president's chief economic advisor, the speech will focus on energy independence to the extent that it will 'knock your socks off.' And he told a recent university symposium that "within 30 years, we will have pollution-free and basically free energy."

That's good news - especially coming from a Bush administration expert - because the prospect of adjusting to a shrinking oil supply and creating a low-carbon economy is something the world must come to grips with soon to avoid environmental disaster. But the Bushites have been reluctant to act on this.

How Bahamian Political Parties Choose Candidates

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

According to a front page story in The Tribune last week, former PLP Cabinet Minister and veteran politician George Smith upset some of his colleagues when he publicly lectured them about the kind of candidates they should offer in the next general election.

It was good advice for both political parties but more so for Mr. Smith’s party because of present circumstances. The PLP was in a bind before the last election because not too many people thought the party stood a chance of winning. Neither did they. So they made many mistakes.

They accepted a lot of money from one particular gentleman, not expecting that they would be called upon to meet his special demands in the matter of a bank licence that had been revoked. That came back to haunt them almost immediately.

They made some platform promises apparently without carefully considering whether they could fulfill them once in office.

Prince Charles, Me, and the Governor-General's Youth Award

by Larry Smith

You may not know this, but Tough Call grew up with Prince Charles.

He and I are about the same age, we went to the Clifford Park Independence celebrations together, and we still haven't figured out what we are supposed to do in life.

I clearly recall Charles' troubled childhood. But while he may have had distant and pre-occupied parents, he certainly enjoyed a much finer education than I did.

During the 1960s, while I was lectured by a Scot named Roger Kelty in un-air conditioned classrooms at Queen's College, Charles was at Gordonstoun - an elite school set in a 17th century Scottish estate that could have been the model for Harry Potter's Hogwarts Academy.

Students at Gordonstoun and its associated schools are committed to "academic excellence, personal development and responsibility...achieved by participating in community service, work projects, exchange programmes and adventuring."

Wow! Other than picking up rocks on the playing field and writing lines about 'trifling in de corridor' (set by prefect Winston Jones), all I can remember from my school days are Mr Kelty's literary jokes (as in "There's a divinity that shapes our ends...") - which he continues to email me from his Lifeless Cay office.

Law and Principles are for Every Season

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!

That exchange is from the celebrated play, A Man For All Seasons, by Robert Bolt, which was first staged in Britain in 1960 and several years later made into a movie. It is, of course, about Sir Thomas More, the brilliant scholar, lawyer and statesman who was Lord Chancellor under Henry VIII.

Origins of the Cultural Relic of Junkanoo

by Larry Smith

"It is now the month of December, when the greatest part of the city is in a bustle. Loose reins are given to public dissipation; everywhere you may hear the sound of great preparations."

This is not a description of the lead-up to Junkanoo. It was written by a Roman not long after the death of Jesus. The writer, Seneca, was referring to the celebration of Saturnalia, a time marked by “drinking and being drunk, noise and games and dice, appointing of kings and feasting of slaves, and singing naked.”

During this time the slaves also had licence to ridicule their masters - something scholars mistakenly refer to as 'social inversion'.

But Saturnalia has even more ancient roots. It was all about the winter solstice - which has to do with the tilt of the Earth as it spins on its axis. As someone once said, "The cycles of nature have been here since before there were people to even mark their turning."

The midwinter celebration of the solstice is perhaps the world's oldest and most universal cultural event. It is the time after which the days get progressively longer and warmer. It is a calendrical hinge -- the day that the sun returns, or is reborn.

Violence - at Home and Abroad - is the Enemy

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

There were glimmers of hope in 2006 but on the whole it was not a very good year for the world. Bloody conflicts continued to take a heavy toll in terms of human suffering, and abundant resources that could have done so much good for humanity were poured the into the bottomless pits of wars and conflicts.

Nature itself seemed to cry out to heedless leaders with warnings that many years of abuse of the natural environment was approaching a tipping point beyond which there will be catastrophic and possibly irreversible consequences for the planet and its ability to sustain life.

After three years the Iraq war remained as intractable as ever and the bloodletting continued to mount. Estimates of Iraqi casualties ranged from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands and the American people watched with horror as the death toll for their armed forces approached the three thousand mark.

The estimated cost to the US Treasury ran into the hundreds of billions and some say that by the time it is over it could be as high as a trillion dollars. The great tragedy is that this was from the beginning an unnecessary war based on ideological hubris and an elaborate web of deception.