The Right of the People vs the Judiciary

             I always thought and believe that the practice of Democracy is rightly expressed as government for the people, by the people, of the people.. not necessary in that order. Over the years I have however been observing behaviors in these United States and elsewhere which do not seem consistent with this belief or axiom. The United States seem proud of its system of Democracy and sets out to propagate it throughout the world even to places and civilization far older and more experienced in the practice than they are.
We continue to hear pronouncements that when there is an issue in which there is disagreement of any kind...'let the people decide' In effect let the will of the people be the prevail.(The will of the people)?.So we have all over the world the will of the people is being exercised in deciding to change a government and 'elect ' the government it wants. They can do this by collective action  (violently) or through the ballot box. The first focus of the American Declearation of Independence of the --------- states:
              that :mankind is imbued with certain inalienable rights among them being the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". This Declearation  asserts that:
          "to secure these rights Governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed., that whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and to institute a new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organising its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness".

So we get as a demonstration of these principles  the holding of elections where the people decide on their representatives in every area of the nation's activities So- called 'democratic principles' tend to pervade all group activity in an out of the boardroom, from the smallest enclave to the largest grouping. Some countries have practiced some or all these principles for hundreds of years even before the US was born. The US is not the oldest Democracy nor is it the smartest. However there is the prevailing tendency by some 'high up types in the US administration who believe that its brand of democracy can be applied to all countries regardless of their historical, cultural and socio-economic experiences. According to one comedian 'you can't go around trying to force US democratic principles on other countries all willly-nilly'. they do not have confidence in their own democratic practices. at the lowest level where the government of the people begins.

So why when the people vote in favor of or against an issue a move is made to the courts to overturn..the will of the people. Put it on the ballot they say and let the people decide---- is this a joke. one remembers prop 8 in California, Bloomberg ignoring 'the will of the people' who twice voted in favor of term limits to manipulate the council so that he can bypass this 'will.'
Why then does the US try to impose its will on the government of other countries rather than leaving it the 'will' of the people in their particular countries. If they do not like a leader or a leader is not jumping to their music then their destabilation machine kicks in and undermines it until they get their way They impose restricions, embargoes and threaten anyone who dare to exercise their independence/sovernity to go against these restrictions. After forty six years of trade embargo how is Cuba  and the Cuban people a threat to the US? Why not let the Cuban people decide.. which they did during the 'Bayof Pigs'.

'Al' yu backside inside the stand'

                 I have been reading and listening to a lot of commentaries and opinions and advice about Guyana. These have been posted mainly on facebook and other parts of the Internet mainly by Guyanese living abroad. Ninety nine percent of these commentaries are levelled at the past and present PPP/C regimes and are exclusively negative in nature and extremely damming. One is bombarded by the vicious attacks on individuals and groups aligned to this party and the conditions in Guyana much of it with justification. Any observer reading the articles or listening to the speeches   would conclude that Guyana is the worse country in the world and that there is nothing good happening there.is this fact or propaganda? One would get the impression too, that the economic, social .political and moral tragedy that is Guyana have all been engineered by the PPP/C and its henchmen. Did the PNC do better after twenty six years in office??  'Kick them out. burn them at the stake, jail them and throw away the key, hang them do anything but get the PPP/C criminals out'. These suggestions reached a very high crescendo before the November elections and continued even after. True, the recent elections only partially succeeded in achieving some of the wishes but it seem to have made matters worse by giving the opposition a one seat majority in the House while leaving the PPP/C in control of the Presidency.
This 'opposition' now consists of three parties: the former PNC, the AFC and the WPA banded under a new name APNU. Why did the PNC (who ruled Guyana for twenty six years) want to hide under this umbrella. Are they ashamed of their identity or their  past. Wasn't it Burnham who referred to the WPA as the Worse Possible Alternative? His party (PNC) would have never formed an alliance with any of this bunch while he was alive. He must be turning in his grave!!
             Who can contend that the PNC ever 'won' a free and fair elections in Guyana. Don't you think that the PPP/C learned from the PNC as they sat on the sidelines observing all those years while ballot boxes were stuffed at the Army locations or disappeared and were switched in transit? While no one is condoning or supporting any type of electoral/political fraud or misdeeds, both parties and individuals within them) need to be condemned for the failures of the economy and socio- political structure in Guyana.
            A number of persons have been asking, why are you bringing up the past they  (the PPP/C are responsible now), but one does not have to bring up the past, just look around....   the past is all around in plain sight. Moses Nagamotoo was Information Minister in the PPP Government promoting  the same agenda he appears to be against but helped to create. Wasn't he the one who in 1998 advised the Indians to bide their time ,take their insults quietly and wait to exact vengeance on the Afro Guyanese who were 'raping and assaulting his Indian people'.  Oscar Clarke is a former Minister of Home Affairs who at one time threatened to call out the GDF on striking UG students. Robert Corbin (affectionately known as the enforcer) is still there, Hamilton Greene still persists and is running the City government. Carl Grenidge as Minister of Finance presided over the worse economy in Guyana' s history re: cassava bread/ rice flour/ banning/contra banning  of essential food items. If you criticize Jagdeo for his multi million dollar house (and he was President)  how come there is no mention of Grenidge's $28m dollar Porche (and he was the Finance Minister). Then of course David was the Military advisor to Forbes Burnham during the GDF intervention into the ballot boxes and  the atrocities in Berbice  and elsewhere. David is not a politician Burnham would describe him as 'not having the acumen concomitant with the rascality of high office'. Yes! who can forget the "Paramountcy of the Party Philosophy" where the Party forms and informs the Government.  The PPP/C did not create or promote  that power philosophy.
               Does one have to spell out the era of long and frequent blackouts, water shortages, forceful attendance at the  Developers' course, National Service, forced working at Belfield farm of the President, public servants cutting cane to break the strike, spraying of insecticide on wheaten flour bread at the markets and public servants who were taken off the airplanes or forced to escape through the 'backtrack' etc. These acts were not engineered by the PPP government. Sure there are people who are too young or not much older  than twenty six years to have known about any other government nor have any experience of these conditions. Some who know prefer to hide under amnesia or tend to brush the experiences aside.'A Nation (People) who forgets (ignores) the past is certainly doomed to repeat it.
Embrace these characters all you want but remember they all have some kind of 'skeletons' and none of them is 'clean'. Just as there are elements in the PPP/C who are and were involved in various questionable and unquestionable acts there are elements in the PNC/R or APNU who have engaged in similar acts as well.
the point here is that all are guilty all are involved all are consumed.

           What is needed is a completely new crop of 'competent folks' untouched by  philosophy and the 'mud' of the past
Secondly, Guyanese and others who are sitting safely outside (in the stand) should stop trying to influence the state of play from abroad. If you feel so strongly about the conditions  in the homeland go back show yourself, join the protests and the fight there. If you can't bat or bowl or field sit your behind in the stand and observe the game  as best as you can and let the participants decide the outcome. Let the democratic process be exploited to the fullest.                                       

New book title-- Caribbean: Economics, Migrants and Control. Available now in all bookstores  from Xlibris.com and google.com

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Are we outsourcing our Brain?

More and more man is devising gadgets intending to speed up certain activities and make life easier but in fact are making us less dependent on our brain.I come into contact everyday with people who cannot do simple operations without recourse to the calculator.I am one who supports totally the use of technology in everyday life. Not only does it make life easier and more effective but it leaves time to indulge in leisure.I firmly believe that man was not made so that he can work but that he can enjoy leisure and pleasure.(be fruitful and multiply and have dominion) is the only admonitions we were given. But look what technology is doing to us. Not only are we sedentary but we have become 'impersonal and unsocial' Please note that being sedentary is not leisure.Forget about the dog being man's best friend... the electronic gadget is.I recall in my ststistics classes we had to not only remember the formulae but know how they are arrived at These days studying the formula or the times tables in math and committing them to memory is considered corporal punishmnet.I wish I was in grade school these days I would have saved myself a lot of sleepless nights and 'my hide from the tanning'.Name any game and we can sit in our bedroom and play it without even seeing a court, gym or outside.

Modern man cannot find his way around any more without a GPS. True that society has become more complicated than it was back in the day when men followed the elements or looked at a map. Columbus and them would have been very impressed or very lost. We have become so dependent on this technology the we follow it blindly and dont even know when we are lost until the end.

I am afraid that we are developing a less sociable, totally withdrawn species who would not know to live in a group,lack teamwork dynamics and know nothing about how to get along with his neighbor. We are becoming less and less gregarious. This specie will see the demise of what is understood by the word 'society' Is this the individualist, mechanical, animated,robotical, virtual, antisocial civilization we want to construct? No wonder we are trying to destroy each other. Life means nothing if we ar virtual beings. There is no feeling ,love thy neighbor mentality any more.
We no longer have to know our 'times tables' or how to work out our 'areas', 'percentages' etc we have the calculator. We used to figure out how to get from 'here to there'.. we have the GPS even if we get lost periodically. We do not have to know how to cook: no longer we just have the food delivered to our homes.Cars are becoming smart to drive themselves, park themselves because drivers are becoming dumber. Actually it is not smart cars we need but smart drivers. machines are being invented to do every household chore imaginable. We can even have virtual sex.

Our brain is being required to do less and less and we are becoming more dependent on machines. Even going to work is becoming outdated. We can sit in our living room and teach classes of studente hundreds of miles away and acomplish complex tasks which would take less time than if we had to travel to work.

In addition our technologies are being developed abroad and are repaired by technicians in India,Pakistan etc.

Whats up with dat

There were two reports which caught my attention this past week or so. Individually I might not have been shocked but, coming one after the other like they did, I was stunned---I was for two reasons: a) the minor attention given by the press and b) the insult levelled to concerned New Yorkers on the whole when the one was followed by the other.
The first was the report by Forbes Magazine on 9/20/2011 identifying the 400 richest people in America, among them were also the richest new Yorkers.The report claims the NY mayor is the second richest New yorker with $19.5 billion behind David Koch with $25 Billion. Bloomberg the report stated made $1.5 Billion last year I do not pity or envy the rich- this is the nature of capitalism.
When the second report came out my jaw dropped at the headline of 9/23/201:
"New york city poverty rate rose to an alarming 20.1% in 2010, latest census Bureau figures show."
The report states that food pantry and soup lines are getting longer and Agencies are running out of supplies, people have used up all their emergency savings on food and rent;"if this problem goes untreated you are endandering the entire economic engine that is New York city' ... the report concludes.

Changing nature

In the 1980's Charles Handy offered that very soon the monster of changing nature of work will encompass us. Indeed the world and certainly the US has seen it happen before we realise it.The idea of working for an employer for twenty, thirty and forty years is quickly disappearing.The technological age has redefined 'work' as we know it. People are 'working' away from the 'office' more than ever,Many offices have less and less people on few machines. Some of the most critical decisions are no longer made in the boardrooms or even the bedrooms. Electronic machines have made it possible not only to create/design jobs but to control jobs.What used to take an eight hour day is now taking an eighteen hour week with prolonged leisure time. It is possible to 'work' for many employers from your front porch without having to leave your home. Street sellers/vendors have access to high tech machines where they can check on, order, pay and track the delivery of their products. Multi-billion mergers, acquisitions, trades and contracts are made on the golf course or from a touch screen.
By now everyone knows the dilemma of large companies who give you an '800 number' and you are connected to someone in Pakistan or India and we learn about the joys and pains 'outsourcing'.
So why are we so shocked and angry that 'American' goods and services are made overseas.Certainly the products are made cheaper and in larger quantities elsewhere. The companies become the villain, the foreign countries become the villain and we continue to cry out about the lack of jobs and the mortgaging of the economy in the process. Did I say mortgage.. I hope no one forecloses on us. All kinds of products from sneakers/sports wear, to clothing, spare parts, cars,electronics toys are in America but not made in America the list is endless. We keep oscillating from one economic color to the other... is this is the gray economy.
We are indeed in a dilemma these days. Either let our 'stuff' be made by the Chinese or the Taiwanese or let them be made at home by the Mexicans. You see it?

Do it for all

It seems that every time the city is in a mess three groups of workers are targetted to help bail them out. Policemen, firemen and teachers. The latter have been the butt of jokes, pressures and every imaginary criticism available. The entire City and State seem to depend on teachers for their existence. If the students dont do their home work blame the teachers, if the students come to school late or not at all blame it on the teachers, if the meals are not nutritious it is the teachers fault, if the child is not getting enough sleep.... and on and on. Dont even talk about the learning environment.The teacher is the classroom wizzard. He has to see everything that is happening in the class and be able to effect control.
I say put these decision makers to teach for one week in schools in the projects not the so called 'show schools'. Put them in a District 75 junior and High school and see how long they would survive. Maybe then they would have a greater appreciation of what some teachers face on a daily basis.