Mahogany CoConut Blog

The Caribbean Is One Nation. CARICOM Prepares To Offer Our Sacred Ancestors As                           Instruments for Imperialism, Again                                                          By Pachamama                   Dr. Hilary Beckles Caribbean point man on reparations.                                            May you rise on the wings of Ra! One hundred and seventy six (176) years after the formal emancipation of African slaves in the British colonies and one hundred and forty-nine (149) years after the current Anglo-American empire was able to follow suit, Caribbean elites are again seekin...

The Caribbean Is One Nation.                                       Soccer And Global Racism                                  By Pachamama The World Cup is just around the corner and as Brazil prepares for this signal event of soccer, Brazilian players, of distinctively African origins, continue to face the leading edge of racism in all of Europe. In fact, all Black or African soccer players have been facing, increasingly, incidences of overt racism in the seat of the White race. When we say racism we mean the system as scientifically defined. We are not particularly concerned about personal likes or dislikes, we are here defining racism as the recent and historic power of White people to enforce social, legal, economic; cultural systems; which are anathema to the interest of peoples of colour. It ...

The Caribbean Is One Nation.                                                                                    Dateline Ukraine - The 'New' Cold War, The Grand Chess Board Ukraine Pretesters    By Pachamama   The schizophrenia of Western leaders and policymakers reminds us of their ‘illustrious’ forebears in Ancient Rome, particularly Nero and Caligula. For it was Caligula (37AD – 41AD) who named his horse as pro-counsel and Nero (54AD – 68AD) whose location of extreme madness at the centre of world governance remains infamous, even after nearly 2000 years. The proximity of this culture of insanity is not unlike the normalization of the madness of Bush (the younger) and Reagan, in more recent times. If we wanted to be charitable to Obama and then pr...

The Caribbean Is One Nation Caribbean Flags It should now be obvious to all and sundry, that the year 2014 will mean nothing more than depressingly minimal growth for most if not all Caribbean states. We are being directed by the International Monetary (Mercenary) Fund; relying on the cooked up statistics of agencies such as Standard and Poor and Moody's. Almost daily we are being “rated” by foreigners, who still see us as fun-loving natives who spend our time in lazy repose on our beaches. As far as they are concerned, we are non –productive and incapable of managing our own affairs. Imagine they come out of the United States, a country that is saddled with its own debt and whose economy and corporate corruption are directly responsible for much of the world’s current economic crisis, which was fuelled by the greed of the Wall Street titans, and brazenly try to project themselves as our saviors. Why do we subject ourselves to such humiliation is beyond the imagination but ...

The Caribbean Is One Nation. The short brutish life of Brandon By Vaneisa Baksh  Apr 17, 2014 at 9:40 AM ECT  Short and brutish, his life ended tragically. Yet even in a world where the bizarre has become almost banal in terms of its frequency, the life and death of Brandon Hargreaves was remarkably sad.  Twice in his short life, Brandon was the subject of sustained news headlines. Each time, the circumstances were terrible and deeply disturbing.  We know little about the circumstances surrounding his first ten years or so. His great-uncle, Clyde Mottley, told Newsday, that the boy’s life was “very hard”.  “He was tramautised very early in life, mentally, physically. To me he was a nice, loving child, reaching out for love and wasn’t getting it,” Mottley told Newsday at the Forensic Science Centre, St James, where the autopsy on Hargreaves took place.” He was twelve, just on the cusp of teenage-hood, when the country first heard how hard h...

The Caribbean Is One Nation                                                               Professor Norman Girvan: Exceptional Caribbean Intellectual Professor Norman Girvan “It perhaps, says something of the outlook of Norman Girvan, and his eclectic interests, that, born in Jamaica and living in Trinidad and Tobago, he died while receiving medical treatment in Cuba—for injuries received while hiking in the Eastern Caribbean island of Dominica. Further, up to the time of his accident, Prof Girvan actively campaigned for the rights of Dominican Republic citizens of Haitian descent. At his death, too, Prof Girvan was the personal representative of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on the Venezuela-Guyana border dispute. Until recently, he researched and taught at The University of the West Indies Graduate Institute of Inter...

The Caribbean Is One Nation. The idea of Barbados Vincy(St. Vincent) leader says island most conservative and progressive b y Ralph E. Gonsalves Barbados is an idea which has, over time, become manifest in reality. The idea of Barbados encompasses more than a nation-state or a national community. To be sure, it flows from a national community which has been in ownership, not residence, of an especial or particular landscape and seascape. Still, it is more than this; and it assumes a veritable autonomy as a category beyond the community. The Barbadian diaspora, scattered overseas, has come to draw from this “specialness” known as the idea of Barbados. This idea acknowledges that Barbados is unique, sui generis, of its own kind. It is connected to –– nay, derived from –– the physical and historical condition of Barbados, yet transcends it. The unique “idea of Barbados” does not, and cannot, make Barbados immune from the universal “laws” of history, society or political...

The Caribbean Is One Nation. I’m a Caribbean man Machel ‘brilliant’ as he addresses students in Miami: By Nigel Telesford Apr 6, 2014  Reigning Power Soca Monarch and Road March King Machel Montano put his music aside to deliver what was described as a “brilliant”, “insightful”, “heartfelt” and “inspiring” address to hundreds of Caribbean students at Miami Dade College, North Campus in Florida, USA, on Saturday. Montano appeared as the keynote speaker during the opening ceremony of the 40th conference on leadership, hosted by the Florida Caribbean Students Association (FCSA). The event featured testimonials from students, panellists, entrepreneurs and even a member of the US Congress, before Montano took the podium and shared his life story and advice with the attentive assembly. After observing all protocols and recognising his former schoolmate, Dr Anil Ramnanan, Trinidad and Tobago consul general in Miami, Florida, and event coordinator and FCSA adviser Marlon Hi...

The Caribbean Is One Nation. Guyana National Flag “If we (the community leaders) have failed to comprehend the essence of the regional integration movement,” he told the conference, “the truth is that thousands of ordinary Caribbean people do, in fact, live that reality every day… “We are,” he had declared, “a family of islands nestling closely under the shelter of the great Co-operative Republic of Guyana. And this fact of regional togetherness is lived every day by ordinary West Indian men and women in their comings and goings…’’  Errol Barrow, July 1986 When Errol Barrow made the statement that we are, “a family of islands nestling closely under the shelter of the great Co-operative Republic of Guyana. And this fact of regional togetherness is lived every day by ordinary West Indian men and women in their comings and goings…” he was probably envisioning a Guyana that by now would have taken its rightful place in the true development of the Caribbean Nation. We a...

The Caribbean Is One Nation. Flags of Caribbean Nations We are now beyond certain that  immediate steps must be  taken to formulate a regional socio-economic policy that will not only focus on the current malaise that envelops the Caribbean but must also focus on a developmental model which serve the region through the next half century. We say half century because we are looking at the next two generations, who we believe, will have great challenges if they want to prosper in the region. On a daily basis, we witness that the one legged economic policy of putting all our eggs in the tourism industry basket, may not be in the best interest of our struggling economies. While we recognize that the industry is a considerable foreign exchange earner, we also must recognize that it takes as much as it brings because at least seventy percent of the foreign exchange earned may very well be finding its way out of the same economies in order to satisfy the demands of the indust...

The Caribbean Is One Nation. Trinidad PM,Kamla Persad-Bissessar, The decision by Trinidad and Tobago, Prime Minister Kamla Persad – Bissessar, to fire the Minister of the People , Mr. Glenn Ramdharsingh and to accept the resignation from her cabinet ,  of  Minister of Tourism ,Mr. Chandresh Singh is supported by the Mahogany Coconut Group. We note that both these gentlemen have effectively ruined their political careers by a form of violence against women.  Mr. Singh was accused of groping the breast of an airline worker during a flight from Tobago. In the case of Mr. Ramdharsingh, he apparently inflicted physical violence against his former lover. It is known that the MCG has been in the forefront of calling for stricter laws to deal with acts of violence against women, children and the elderly. MCG has warned that acts of violence against women are not the preserve of any one class or group of citizens. We note here that both of the perpetrators are of East In...