Mahogany CoConut Blog

 Above is the ackee used as a national dish in Jamaica usually with salt fish. Jamaica Flag  Above is the ackee of Barbados. It is not used in any dishes but eaten as a fruit. Barbados Flag Jamaicans refer to the Barbados ackee as guineps. Trinidadians also refer to the Barbados ackee as guinep.

                                                Caribbean News Caribbean Nation Flags School Violence : A dramatic increase in school violence has prompted some teachers unions in the Caribbean, to instruct teachers to avoid trying to get involved when students are fighting or engaging in physical disputes. The upsurge in crimes on the school plant comes as a twelve year old is being charged for murder in one of our islands. Although this crime does not appear to be school related, it signifies a dangerous trend throughout the region, where disagreements among our youth are being settled by use of violence. Walter Rodney Walter Rodney : Investigations into the death of Guyanese and Caribbean intellectual giant and historian, Dr. Walter Rodney, are starting to take shape. The Latest news is that a three member commission has been appointed, to investiga...

Caribbean School Children Some of our well intentioned Caribbean citizens are blaming co-education as the fountain from which many of our problems within the school system and society springs. We beg to respectfully differ. In their zeal to solve the problems, they are calling for the re-introduction of single-sex schools. This will be an extremely backward step, taking into consideration, limited resources and the fact that there is no empirical evidence that co-education has caused any widespread problems within our Caribbean school system. The forerunner to the call for the reintroduction of single –sex schools, was the unfair blame put on female teachers by those who claim, that our female teachers are favoring the girl students and “turning the boys into sissies”. As ludicrous as this essentially sexist position is; it has gained considerable momentum within some Caribbean countries. Those who hold this position have buttressed their claim by pointing to the fact that girls...

Caribbean School Children As the Caribbean continues to reel under  severe economic pressure, there are many citizens, who in a desperate rush to find instant solutions have determined , that in order to correct the maladies, they must hold on to a nostalgia that is dangerous and self-defeating. Nowhere is this dangerous clinging to the past, more evident, than our failure to recognize that little will change without radically reforming the educational system throughout the entire region. To put it very mildly: we cannot have a new Caribbean Nation built on the pillars of a European education system. In order to avoid facing up to the stark reality that our education system is now in complete failure mode, we are beginning to see the apologists enter the debate about what is wrong with the system. It is ironic that while they are finding great fractures within the system; they are still trying their utmost to protect it. In other words they want to fix it without changing it...

Mr. Andrew Holness       The news out of Jamaica is that the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party JLP wants to have a referendum, to determine if Jamaica should be a part of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CJJ). Once more the noose is being drawn tighter around the already choking neck of the regional integration movement. We would have thought that Mr. Andrew Holness, the young, dynamic and recently reelected leader of the Jamaica Labour Party, would have been more in tuned with progressive thinkers in the region. If the new breed of Caribbean leaders, of which we include Mr. Holness, cannot be more enlightened, it means that crapaud lining up to smoke we pipe! Others may opine, that to expect him to be any different, is an excursion in futility since he is the political godson of former prime minister Mr. Edward Seaga, who was known to only make decisions that enhanced his political ambitions and whose legacy will be the nefarious garrison politics that he used so w...

                                      Positive Youth in a time of Negativity By Michael Headley Xavier Marcus January 03, proved to be a sunny but bitterly cold day, and I am not being oxymoronic.  It was the aftermath of  snow storm which had blanketed New York, and the Northeast United States, with several inches of  the white stuff.  To get some relief I decided to watch CBC TV 8 to see what was happening on Good Morning Barbados.  And I was pleasantly surprised to see the host, Doug Hoyte and hostess Kimberly Skeete interviewing  three young inspiring Bajans. The first was Mr. Xavier Marcus who is enrolled in the Nursing and Football programs at Nicholls State University, located in Thibodaux  Louisiana.  It was founded in 1948.   Throughout the interview, I got the impression that Xav...

                                   The Mad Rush for Dominance in Central Asia By Pachamama Map of Central Asia For years foreign policy aficionados have been thinking and writing about the ‘‘Great Game Theory”. Brzezinski for nearly 50 years has been theorizing that the relative winner of the stupendous resources of Central Asia will, to a large extent, determine global dominance for the foreseeable future. There are those who argue that most of what we have seen in the last half century was merely the movement of the lesser chess pieces to open up this grand chess board and for the checkmating of other interests in this geo-political, geo-strategic game for global dominance. As we write some very interesting manifestation about the state of the game are appearing. These may indicate the relative positions of the contenders on this ‘Grand Chess Board’ are shifting. It may not be totally ...

                                                         Caribbean Note Book Caribbean Flags St. Lucia, Dominica and St. Vincent:   are still in recovery mode and rebuilding mode, after the heavy rains they experienced , during the Christmas period. we remind our brothers and sisters , to continue to assist , our brothers and sisters in these Caribbean Nation islands. We are certain that children returning to school after the Christmas holidays would still need school supplies and other assistance                                  Haiti : It has been four years , since the devastating earthquake that claimed over 250,000 lives and left damages of $USD 14 billion. Haiti is now preparing to have elections in 2014. We continue to be in...

                        Identical Twins(BLP/DLP) killing Barbados Barbados Coat Of Arms Readers and bloggers would note that many of our contributions, over the past few weeks, have been focused on the island of Barbados. The Mahogany Coconut Group will occasionally zoom in on any Caribbean Nation island that is suffering social and economic convulsions. We have, in the past , focused on Trinidad and Tobago, when we realized that it was necessary to expose a galloping corrupt political ruling class and the actions of dishonest , bold faced political deviants, who in our opinion,had no right in public office.  The MCG is not surprised by the political skulduggery and failure of economic policies now enveloping the BLP/DLP collective. We have long determined that these two parties are identical twins! We note that the pathetic apologists for these political juggernauts continue to fool themselves that Barbados’ ...

Barbados Flag The Final Collapse - Debt, Credit, Capital & Investment   By Pachamama  “There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved”. Ludwig von Mises 1881 – 1973  During the last administration Dr. Justin Robinson’s was the solitary voice in the Barbados intellectual wilderness that kept warning us about an aggressive national debt expansionism. Our interpretation then was that Robinson did not just mean the increasing debt of the central government and its statutory agencies but more importantly the growing debt of businesses and households. Maybe even the expansion of his primary employer. To us he was talking in the aggregates. Some of us get confused, sometimes, when this quartet of words – deb...

The Caribbean Is One Nation. Mia Mottley Owen Arthur ‘Hits’ Mia Mottley, Again – Clyde Mascoll, Clear Heir Apparent, With Kerrie Symmonds as Placeholder   By Pachamama The Nation Newspaper today carries the essential components of an internal party memorandum from Owen Seymour Arthur (OSA) to Kerrie Symmonds. A memo which is reported to have expressed a ‘lack of confidence’ in Mia Amor Mottley (MAM) as leader of the Barbados Labour Party (BLP), the official  opposition, in the Parliament of Barbados. This comes after last fortnight’s revelations that the same OSA had called a significant policy initiative by MAM as a ‘gimmick’.  Indeed, these are amongst the most sever blows that have ever been delivered to any political leader in the history of Barbadian politics. Maybe in the history of Christendom.  Arthur's animus towards Mottley is now clearly too deep for this party to present any semblance of a united front against a weakened Democratic Lab...

  By Khem Jokhoo  The root cause of any type of violence is the five vices of anger, greed, ego, lust and attachment. Anger and lust   are most influential and possibly your greatest enemy. Triggers of Domestic Violence Some of the factors that trigger anger and arrogance are unfulfilled desires and expectations, obsessions as well as addictions to lust, greed and power. Unfulfilled desires and obsessions are generally temporary in nature, but addictions to lust and greed for power are more permanent in nature and very often end in casualties.  An addiction to infidelity or debauchery is possibly your worst enemy as this can lead to separation, divorce or death that includes murder and suicide... When bitten by lustful infidelity, a person loses all reasoning powers, neglects all responsibilities as well as respectability and will commit the most heinous crime if his addiction is unrequited and scorned.  They become wrong and strong and practice ...

Barbados - King Arthur’s Fourth Coup-d’état and Widespread ‘Immorality’ take Centre Stage within a Deep Political-Economic Crisis. Former Bdos. P.M. Owen Arthur by Pachamama As a recidivist coup plotter within a political culture where displacing the leaderships within his party and the other partner in a hideous duopoly dance, Owen Seymour Arthur (OSA), may not be operating contrary to law but certainly his actions border on the immoral. An immorality that is widespread and infects the entire polity. In the nation newspaper of Monday, January 06, OSA is quoted with a determination that the policies of his political leader were a mere ‘gimmick’. Mia Amor Mottley (MAM), as leader of the opposition BLP, had earlier suggested some sort of eminent persons group should be set up to help government, at least, better understand their current problems. Indeed, she indicated that the recommendations of this group, as proposed, should guide national policy as her party, the BLP, wou...

                                                               Barbados: Time Is Running Out Barbados National Flag The Mahogany Coconut Group will not be drawn into senseless nit picking in relation to the possible death of the Barbados its citizens have come to know and love. We are convinced that the first order of business is a return to the polls. If we accept that there has been a betrayal because the government has renege on its election promise to preserve the jobs of public servants, the truth is that it has failed to keep the central plank of its recent elections platform. Mr. Chris Sinckler has failed as Minister of Finance and should relieve himself or be relieved of that portfolio by the  Prime Minister. The country will not recover from this crisis overnight.  It is now obvious to all and sun...

Tales of Gloom and Doom - 2014 Will Be No Better, It Will Be Worse…….. Far Worse!                                                      by Pachamama The rapid evolution of mankind over recent millennia, and particularly after the Industrial Revolution, has hit a significant speed bump. We write this with the certain knowledge that we stand high risks of having all of our predictions being spectacular misjudgments. But unlike the general culture from which we come, we are bold and brave enough to not only try to bring new understandings to the past and better understand the present, we are prepared to, with audacity and poise, be daring enough to predict future events, in the short, medium and long term. As soothsayers, we predict that we are indeed at the end of an age that no set of forces can slow, moderate or reverse, even though humans are t...