Bahama Pundit is a group weblog that publishes the work of top Bahamian commentators. We welcome your feedback.
You may link to this site but no material may be reproduced without permission.
"How can you rape an underage girl and then post pictures of her online?"
That was the question posed by the grieving mother of Rehteah Parsons, who says her daughter was never the same after four boys sexually assaulted her two years ago.
When a cellphone picture of the alleged assault was circulated around her Nova Scotia high school, Rehtaeh immediately dropped out, and eventually committed suicide. Her funeral was held on Saturday.
The initial police investigation had ended with no charges filed, due to lack of evidence, but following public pressure the police reopened their investigation. A large part of that pressure was a threat by the hacker group, Anonymous, to identify the boys online.
In 2009 a New York City emergency medical technician faced misdemeanor charges after being accused of taking a picture of a female murder victim and posting it to his Facebook page.
Referring to their twin island-nation’s oil wealth, some Trinidadians and Tobagonians liked to brag, “Oil don’t spoil.” It may not spoil in the ground. But the potential to spoil rotten, some politicians, public officials and others is legend.
Speaking ahead of the gambling referendum In January, Bahamas Faith Ministries International President Dr. Myles Munroe sounded this dire warning:
“Any government pressured by a small lobby group such as the gaming bosses will inevitably produce corruption. And if this referendum goes through we will never have a pure government again.”
Bahamaislandsinfo.com further reported: “He [Dr. Munroe] also stated that the motivation of the referendum of the governing authority seems to be the surrender to the powers with money. In other words he said that the government cannot rightly govern because they will owe allegiance to the few and not to the citizenry or the people of The Bahamas.”
The pastor’s warning is noteworthy. The nature and role of leadership have been central themes of Dr. Munroe’s ministry. The quality of leadership at various levels of society will be pivotal in the debate on oil exploration.
April is tax return month in the US - and here in the Bahamas we have just embarked on the road to the proposed introduction of a value-added tax on goods and services before the next general election. This will begin a process of raising government revenue from around 19 per cent of GDP to some 23 per cent.
Most people who think about these things accept that the country could do with more revenue to invest in essentials like infrastructure development, training, and healthcare. But they also see a big problem with demanding more taxes while we continue on our present course.
The danger is that those extra taxes will go down the same monstrous drain hole of political boondoggles like Bahamasair, ZNS and BEC, as well as pay for extra perks and benefits for the political class and their cronies. And in the end, we will be left no better off than we are now.
To make the point crystal clear (for those unfamiliar with the term), a boondoggle is a project that is considered a useless waste of time and money, yet is often continued for external political reasons. And a boondoggle can exist for a very long time, either because the failure is not widely recognised or because those responsible have ulterior motives.
The fear of government waste and boondoggles is hardly misplaced. The three state corporations alone, mentioned earlier, offer more than enough evidence over many decades.
Recall the hysteria and hate-drenched anti-gay demonstrations of the previous two decades protesting gay and lesbian visitors cruising to the country to experience our Bahamian hospitality.
Some of the gay bashers invoked the narrative of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19. Genesis, like other books of the Hebrew Scriptures, consists of numerous literary genres and devices.
Genesis contains not one, but two, creation accounts, literary renderings crafted by ancient scribes to convey theological meaning. Today, mostly literalists still believe these to be factual accounts, though the science of evolution demonstrates otherwise.
KINGSTON, Jamaica -- As prospectors are about to drill for oil in Bahamian waters, it's worth taking a look at the recent experience of petroleum licensing in a fellow CARICOM state - Belize.
Over the past several years, the government of that little Central American nation - sandwiched between Guatemala and Mexico - secretly handed out licenses to a slew of shell companies to drill for oil throughout the country and its offshore waters, including in protected areas.
This sparked the formation of the Belize Coalition to Save our Natural Heritage, which has been fighting a running battle with the government over oil licenses. The coalition includes scores of civil society groups and is supported by Oceana, an international marine conservation society.
A "people's referendum" was organised just before the last general election (in March 2012), which resulted in an overwhelming no vote against offshore oil drilling by more than 29,000 people. The coalition also took the government to court, with a decision expected next month.
At a regional conference here last week - organised by the Jamaica Environment Trust, the World Resources Institute, the University of the West Indies and others - Belize was cited as a prime example of why freedom of information is vital for good governance and environmental protection.
Imagine this two-part scenario, the very implausibility of which makes it even that more instructive.
During a British general election, it is revealed that the Leader of the Opposition and the Deputy Leader of the opposition party served in some combination as legal advisor and/or consultant for a company exploring for oil.
Not only is the matter of exploration highly controversial. The politicians mentioned, were they to assume office as prime minister and deputy prime minister, would be key figures in deciding a range of issues for their recent clients.
Pressed to detail the nature of their duties and relationship with the company, including remuneration, the potential numbers one and two in a new administration issue vague comments. Despite a lack of transparency, the leaders claim that there is no conflict of interest.
Bahamian conch populations are in danger of collapsing - as they already have elsewhere in the region - and this was a point of discussion at the Bahamas National Natural History Conference held recently at the College of the Bahamas. The headline takeaway was that a major campaign is being prepared to avert what experts say would be a cultural as well as an ecological catastrophe.
The key point to understand is that conchs don't reproduce at all if their numbers fall below a certain level within a specified location. That’s because – like groupers - they gather in large spawning aggregations to breed. And scientists have observed no mating at all at a density of less than about 50 adults per hectare.
So having conch in our future diet is based entirely on our ability to maintain sufficient numbers today in enough locations. Unfortunately, this picture is made worse by the fact that conch mature slowly. It takes five years before they reproduce (and they can live up to 40 years), but they are now being harvested well before they have a chance to breed.
At the natural history conference, scientists, fishermen, students and others listened to the latest research and engaged in a roundtable discussion of ways to protect this critically important fishery resource. It was a timely moment, because last year a petition was filed in the United States to list the queen conch under the Endangered Species Act.
That would eliminate all trade between the Caribbean and the US, which currently imports more than 70 per cent of the remaining regional conch harvest - including 600,000 pounds a year from the Bahamas (other countries that still export conch are Belize, Honduras and the Turks & Caicos Islands). A full-scale status review of the species is now underway by the Americans.
Though overwhelmingly farcical, the Mid-Year Budget Statement of the PLP Government is nonetheless revealing. It showcased the unshakeably weak performance of Prime Minister Perry Christie when it comes to public administration and the oversight of public finance.
This farce is part of a greater PLP hoax, the magnitude of which is dawning on even some of the party’s more fervent supporters at the 2012 general election.
The Great PLP Hoax comprises at least two major dimensions. First, that Christie would be a different prime minister this time. Second, that the PLP would or could deliver the big-ticket items promised in its, “Charter for Governance” and in speeches made by Christie.
Either of these false premises beggared belief. Taken together, they are as unlikely as the Prime Minister refusing an opportunity to speak if offered a microphone.
HAMILTON, Bermuda -- Over a mug of Gosling's rum in the Rosedon Hotel's tea room here recently, the conversation turned to race relations. And retired policeman Ken McDowall reminded me that it was 40 years ago this month that the island's British governor, Sir Richard Sharples, was murdered by a black Bermudian named Erskine Burrows.
McDowall is from St Vincent in the Eastern Caribbean, but he has spent the last 40-plus years in Bermuda, most of them as a police officer. After the governor and his aide were ambushed in the gardens of Government House in 1973, police arrested Burrows and an accomplice named Larry Tacklyn, both career criminals.
Three years later Burrows was found guilty of murdering Sharples and his aide, as well as the earlier murder of the British police commissioner and two white shopkeepers. Tacklyn was found to be complicit in the murder of the shopkeepers.
Both men were said to have been influenced by a militant Marxist group called the Black Berets, and despite petitions for clemency they were hanged at the Royal Naval Dockyard on the island's western end in 1977. These were the last judicial executions under British law anywhere in the world.
In the still fresh second decade of this century there continues to be a fundamental shift in humanity’s moral imagination with regard to respecting the dignity and advancing the equality of gays and lesbians.
In this decade and during this century, gays and lesbians will experience less prejudice and witness the end of discrimination on various fronts.
Fear-mongering accompanied by malevolent rhetoric are the eager co-conspirators of prejudice and bigotry, all of which gay and lesbian Bahamians continue to experience as targets of malicious attacks on their humanity.
It is unacceptable to publicly attack someone as a “nigger” whether from a public platform, in a blog, in a tabloid or in Parliament; in the case of the latter whether from a Member on their feet or from their seat.
Similarly, it should no longer be tolerated when the rhetoric of intolerance is applied to gays or lesbians in these venues, with venom like “sissy” or the feminization of a man’s name.
Dead People on Facebook & Unskilled People in the Workforce
by Larry Smith
"How can you rape an underage girl and then post pictures of her online?"
That was the question posed by the grieving mother of Rehteah Parsons, who says her daughter was never the same after four boys sexually assaulted her two years ago.
When a cellphone picture of the alleged assault was circulated around her Nova Scotia high school, Rehtaeh immediately dropped out, and eventually committed suicide. Her funeral was held on Saturday.
The initial police investigation had ended with no charges filed, due to lack of evidence, but following public pressure the police reopened their investigation. A large part of that pressure was a threat by the hacker group, Anonymous, to identify the boys online.
In 2009 a New York City emergency medical technician faced misdemeanor charges after being accused of taking a picture of a female murder victim and posting it to his Facebook page.
Continue reading "Dead People on Facebook & Unskilled People in the Workforce" »
Posted at 12:29 PM in Current Affairs, Social Comment, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
| Reblog (0)