http://zephyr.tigblog.org/ What's on the minds of young leaders from around the globe? en-us http://zephyr.tigblog.org/post/405621 By JAMMAL SMITH, Guardian Business Desk -
Nassau, Bahamas:



New reports suggest an increasing number of American baby boomers are watching their life savings evaporate as the stock market and indeed the economy tank. It's a phenomenon that threatens to rob them of their dreams of a home in the sun and our second home market of their once-sizable investment power.

In a new survey conducted by the American Association of Retired Persons, more than 50 percent of Americans between 55 and 64 have had to cancel their travel plans due to the downturn in the economy. That's to say nothing of any plans to buy a home in the Caribbean.

Another research study is sending just as powerful a message our way. It reveals that more than half of retired Americans cut down their 1Q spending because of worsening economic conditions. The upper-class is by no means immune, as 21 percent of wealthy 60-year-olds are also canceling, shortening or otherwise postponing vacations due to the economy. Some 22 percent are also contributing less to charities, says the Bell Investment Advisors research.

The study participants had a minimum $1 million in investment assets and as such represent the target market for this second-home destination. It's worth noting that more than 70 percent of the resort development projects expected to take place over the next 10 years depend on second-home or hotel-condo sales in order to win their own financing.

But clinching that deal has now become all but impossible in too many cases. It's understandable, say U.S. analysts. They've watched as thousands of baby boomer playing on Wall Street have had 20 or 30 years worth of stock investments — and their accumulated gains — stripped in as little as six to 12 months. Any shares, for example, held in General Motors has now been reduced to their 1958 value, well below what many Americans would have purchased them for.

All and all, it means that more of those U.S. citizens at the height of their earning power and at the top of the corporate totem pole have been forced back to square-one in terms of investments.

They're scrambling, many of them, to re-lay nest eggs that were otherwise supposed to have afforded them the $500,000 to $2 million homes of a Nassau or Harbour Island.

The effects of that changing focus may already be felt by developers here.

As Guardian Business reported last April, Atlantis had only sold about 60 percent of the 495 hotel-condo units it began to hawk two years earlier.

Those suites start at $730,000 and allow the owner 90 days of use annually, with the unit then thrown into the Atlantis pool of guest rooms for the remaining days. The hotel and owner share profits when a guest books the condo. It's a relationship not unlike those offered by other developers and tailor made to the kind of baby boomer American who once had the income to manage such a buy.

There may in fact be too many resort developers still counting on those deep pockets now considerably shallower.

According to a recent KPMG survey canvassing the opinions of regional bankers, our hotel and second home supply may well outweigh demand, something likely contributing to the banking industry's collective decision to remove The Bahamas from the list of Caribbean destinations they feel are best able to weather the global economic storm. That deteriorating state is entirely owing to fallout from the U.S. subprime collapse, an ensuing credit crunch and the skyrocketing fuel costs that have only exacerbated the decline.

With all those balls in the air, baby boomers, that generation born after the Second World War and before the mid 1960s, have largely canceled some of the lavish retirement plans that our tourism industry is increasingly focused on fulfilling.]]> Fri, 04 Jul 2008 09:58:00 EDT http://zephyr.tigblog.org/post/405621 25.0833333 -77.35 25.0833333 -77.35 http://zephyr.tigblog.org/post/402113 By KARAN MINNIS, Guardian Lifestyles Reporter -
Nassau, Bahamas:



As the saying goes: All is fair in love and war, but what about when that war strikes inside the church?

Over the years there have been countless stories of in-fighting among church leaders and the rifts that take place, which eventually leads to a split, not only in the church's hierarchy, but also amongst its members, resulting in a number of new churches being formed.

But do these breakaways end up being successful?

According to Bishop Delton D. Fernander, at New Destiny Baptist Church, Blue Hill Road, for him it has.

"I am a man of God, and over the years I have come to understand that God does things to show you better sometimes," he says. "Sometimes He does things to show you that its time to move on or to say, hey you're not seeing where I'm trying to take you. But today I am sure that it was God's will for me to create, and be the Bishop of New Destiny Baptist Church. Even more importantly, I'm sure that I am following His calling."

Prior to the formation of New Destiny, Fernander served as special assistant to the bishop of St. John's Native Baptist Cathedral, Michael C. Symonette, for five years before he was fired in 2002. It was something he did not see coming, and was difficult for him to deal with.

"I grew up in St. John's, and so when I was forced to step away from there it was very hard for me to do. My whole desire was to work in the church that I had grown up in. My whole desire was to help them ... just to bring and do what I had been trained to do, so it was tremendously hard for me to walk away from that," said Fernander.

"My grandmother was buried at the door, my grandfather was a former pastor there, and my mom (Delores) is still an active member there. But it had gotten so bad that the Lord said to me that I needed to start a new thing. So I walked out on faith on Mother's Day 2002," he stated.

During the first service of New Destiny held in the Governor's Ballroom of the British Colonial Hilton, 150 persons showed up. Fernander was shocked.

"I expected 50 people and I planned for only 50 people.

I booked a room for those 50 people, but that by evening the hotel called to say that because of the calls they received I needed a larger room. So I told them to book the larger room, but not to open the dividers unless we had a crowd, and that's what we got a crowd," said Fernander.

After four weeks, the church relocated to the Lion's Club on J.F. K. Drive and then to the Superwash building on Wulff Road, before New Destiny settled in its present location on Blue Hill Road in the old Sunshine Twin theatre.

"When I was fired, I really didn't understand it, but now I do," he says. "I was trying to take a church that was set in its ways into a direction it didn't want to be in. I'm not saying that the direction it was headed in was bad, but I wanted to do things differently [but] they didn't want that."

Fernander said he was hurt for a long time after the split, to the point he felt that people were just mean. He then went into teaching school, which he said allowed him to develop into a more open pastor

"I now listen to my people and let them help me make decisions. I didn't do that before. I just used to push. So now that I have developed that understanding I understand why things happened the way it did. Now I know my church is truly blessed and now we have about 1,000 members. So I guess it is a success story," he said.

Bishop Lester Cox, senior pastor of Word of Truth Ministries International, says his split from the church into which he was born and raised, Faith Temple Ministries International, also turned into a success story.

"I had to leave the church that I was raised in due to a difference of opinions. In March 2007, along with my wife Vanessa, I left my pastoral post at the Pentecostal denomination to start my own non-denominational church. And although it was not something I planned to do it just happened that way."

Cox declined to go into details surrounding his split, but he said that God was simply showing him that it was time to move on.

"I have fond memories of my time at Faith Temple but sometimes God has different plans for us. Today, our church is established upon five foundational pillars upon which we have declared and decreed to be so. They are, God and His word, God and His truth, God and His unity, God and His love, and God and His Faith," said Cox. "We have based our church on an independent apostolic ministry and we are not under a denomination — we are independent, We answer to God. We do have a council of bishops that I deal with, but other than that we are an independent apostolic ministry, and since our first service which saw approximately 120 persons in attendance, we have been growing ever since."

Cox says he has no regrets, because he's doing God's work

"I strongly believe that it was His will for Word of Truth to be born and for me to be where I am today, so, I have no regrets."

On the other hand, Jesus Centered Ministries senior pastor Sheldon Newton, says not all church splits happen because of "bad-blood" between ministers.

"All pastors have to create an environment where believers can be taught the word of God," said the religious leader at the church on Carmichael Road.

"In my life time, I saw that a lot of Christians are not being victorious because they have not been taught from the basics straight into the mature Christian life and I wanted to be able to help bring people from babies straight into maturity in Christ."

Newton was an elder for five years at New Life Christian Center, Prince Charles Drive, before he started his own church. He left with the blessings of his pastors, Pastors Douglas and Betty Cleare.

"There was no fight, nothing of the sort. They just sent me out to do my own thing. They told me that it was time for me to build my own church and they felt that I could do more on my own. The church gave me their blessing and they sort of pushed me out the door. I wasn't even sure about it, but I did it anyway," said Newton.

Newton's church, which has been operating for a year, is independent, and not affiliated with New Life Christian Center.

He is currently looking for a new location, as he says the membership which started out at 12, and has grown to 80, has outgrown its present location.

"The people just keep on coming, and we just keep being blessed."]]> Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:28:00 EDT http://zephyr.tigblog.org/post/402113 25.0833333 -77.35 25.0833333 -77.35 http://zephyr.tigblog.org/post/400219 D. Paul Reilly, For The Guardian -
Nassau, Bahamas:



As I have written about on many occasions in the past, life is all about one's 'Attitude' toward literally everything. We can all look upon anything that is happening to us at any given moment in time, it either a positive or negative way....it's a choice. This even applies to events which take place, which may appear at first glance, to actually be most detrimental to us. I guess, that it's all about our perception, how we as individuals choose to see what is actually taking place each day, as we relentlessly pursue our goals and objectives on the never-ending road to success.

As an extreme example; I recently heard a prominent Minister of Religion, who happens to be of African decent, state, and I'm quoting his exact words here "Thank God for Slavery". He was of course referring to The FACT, that he personally was very grateful that his forefathers came to The Bahamas where he was privileged to be born. This Minister incidentally has traveled extensively throughout the continent of Africa. So he has experienced the actual conditions under which millions of people live in many impoverished, war torn African nations.

This fact of life makes him most grateful for having been born in The Bahamas, which really is for all intents and purposes, a real Paradise on Earth. This intelligent man therefore chose to look upon slavery in a positive light. This incidentally is not to say that he condones it, but that he knew that he personally, as a descendant of slaves, had indeed benefited from being born in The Bahamas.

Yes My Friend, if we all look long enough and hard enough, we'll be able to see the positive, beneficial side to literally any situation. And, when something negative happens, when someone tries to inflict hardship on us in any way, we ALL have a choice to either, as the title of this article puts it, be 'Grateful or Hateful'. Yes My Friend, don't ever forget, that as I have written about many times in the past, no one but no one controls the way in which you think about anything but you. You are in control at all times.

So, even when things appear not to be going too well for you, in any phase of your life, you have a choice to reflect on the fact, that everything is indeed in 'Divine order'. So, you need to chose to see the good in all potentially bad situations. Yes indeed, you can chose to be 'Grateful or hateful', for it really is absolutely up to you, and no one else, believe me.

So the next time something which appears to be bad happens to you; before you start to automatically get into a negative frame of mind; instead, take a deep breath, and then think deeply on how you can turn a potentially bad situation, into something positive and beneficial instead.

THINK ABOUT IT!

dpr@humanri.com


* Listen to 'Time To Think' the radio program on Star 106.5FM at 8:55 AM 6:15 PM]]> Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:44:00 EDT http://zephyr.tigblog.org/post/400219 25.0833333 -77.35 25.0833333 -77.35 http://zephyr.tigblog.org/post/399771


HE was born one hundred years ago in Valparaiso, in southern Chile, on June 26, 1908. His father, a middle-class lawyer and notary, was a member of Chile’s Radical Party. When I was born, Allende was already 18 years old. He was pursuing secondary studies in high school in his native city.

In his senior years, an old Italian anarchist, Juan Demarchi, introduced him to the works of Marx.

He graduated with top grades. He liked and practiced sports. He enlisted for military service voluntarily, joining the Cuirassiers of Viña del Mar Regiment. He asked to be transferred to the Lancers Regiment of Tacna, a Chilean enclave in the dry and semi-deserted north, a region later returned to Peru. He completed his service as an Army reserve officer. By then, he was already a man of socialist and Marxist ideas. He was not a weak or characterless young man. It was as though he sensed that he would one day fight to the death in defense of the convictions that were already taking shape in his mind.

He decided to study for the noble profession of medicine at the University of Chile. He organized meetings with a group of students who met regularly to read and discuss Marxist literature. He founded the Avance Group in 1929. He was elected vice president of the Federation of Chilean Students in 1930 and actively participated in the struggle against the Carlos Ibáñez dictatorship.

The Great Depression had already unleashed in the United States, following the Stock Market Crash of 1929. In Cuba, the struggle against Machado's dictatorship was underway. Mella had been murdered. Cuban workers and students faced repression. Communists, led by Martínez Villena, organized a general strike. "We need a charge to do away with scoundrels, to complete the work of revolutions (...)", Villena had written in a vibrant poem. Guiteras, a man of profound anti-imperialist sentiments, attempted to overthrow the dictatorship through an armed insurrection. Machado, who was unable to contain the nationwide upheaval, was overthrown and there ensued a revolution which the United States managed to crush, in a matter of months, with kid gloves and iron fist, securing absolute control of the island until 1959.

In a country where imperialist domination was brutally exercised over its workers, culture and natural resources, Salvador Allende remained true to his ideals in a struggle where he showed an unwavering revolutionary conduct.

In 1933, he graduated as a medical doctor. He took part in the founding of Chile's Socialist Party. By 1935, he was already a leader at the Chilean Medical Association. He was imprisoned for nearly half a year. He impelled efforts to create a Popular Front and was elected sub-secretary general of the Socialist Party in 1936.

In September 1939, he was appointed head of the Department of Health of the Popular Front government. He published a book on social medicine. He organized the first Housing Fair. In 1941, he participated in the annual meeting of the American Medical Association in the United States. In 1942, he became Secretary General of Chile's Socialist Party. In 1947, he voted in the Senate against the Permanent Defense of Democracy Law, also known as the "Cursed Law", due to its repressive nature. In 1949, he was promoted to President of Chile's Medical School.

In 1952, the Popular Front put him forth as presidential candidate. He was then 44 years old. He was not elected. He presented the Senate with a draft law for the nationalization of the copper industry. In 1954, he traveled to France, Italy, the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China.

Four years later, in 1958, he was proclaimed candidate to the presidency of the republic by the Popular Action Front, made up of the Popular Socialist Union Party, Chile's Socialist Party and the Communist Party. He lost the election to the conservative Jorge Alessandri.

In 1959, he attended the inauguration ceremony of Venezuelan President Rómulo Betancourt, who until then had been considered a leftist revolutionary figure.

That same year, he traveled to Havana and met with Che and me. In 1960, he gave his support to Chile’s coal miners, who went on strike for more than three months.

In 1961, he and Che denounced the demagogic nature of the Alliance for Progress at an OAS meeting held in Punta del Este, Uruguay.

Appointed candidate to the presidency once again, he was defeated in 1964 by Eduardo Frei Montalva, a Christian Democrat who enjoyed the full support of the dominant classes and who, according to declassified US Senate documents, received campaign money from the CIA. During his time in office, imperialism attempted to craft what came to be known as the "Revolution in Liberty", an ideological response to the Cuban revolution. What it engendered were the foundations of the fascist dictatorship. At that election, however, Allende had secured more than one million votes.

In 1966, he headed the delegation that attended the Tri-Continental Conference of Havana. He visited the Soviet Union for the 50th Anniversary of the October Revolution. The following year, in 1968, he visited the Democratic Republic of Korea and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, where he had the pleasure of meeting and conversing with that country’s extraordinary leader, Ho Chi Min. His itinerary included Cambodia and Laos, at a time when revolutionary sentiments were at their most effervescent.

Following Che’s death, he personally accompanied three Cuban members of the Bolivia guerrilla to Tahiti, men who had survived the Heroic Guerrilla and were already in Chilean territory.

The Popular Unity Party, --a political coalition made up of communists, socialists, radicals, the MAPU, PADENA and Independent Popular Action parties-- proclaimed him its candidate on January 22, 1970. On September 4 of that year, he won the elections.

Allende is a truly classical example of the peaceful struggle for the establishment of socialism.

The US administration, headed by Richard Nixon, went immediately into action following this electoral triumph. The Chilean Army’s Commander in Chief, General René Schneider, was the victim of an assassination plot on October 22 and died three days later. He had not kowtow to the imperialist demand that he lead a coup d’état. The attempt to keep the Popular Unity Party out of office had failed.

Allende legally took office on November 3, 1970 in a wholly dignified manner. From office, he began his heroic battle for change, and against fascism. He was already 62 years old. I had the honor of having fought next to him against imperialism for 14 years, from the time of the triumph of the Cuban revolution.

At the municipal elections of March 1971, the Popular Unity Party secured an absolute majority of votes (50.86 percent). On July 11, President Allende promulgated the Copper Nationalization Law, an idea he had presented before the Senate 19 years before. It was unanimously passed by Congress. No-one dared oppose it.

In 1972, before the UN General Assembly, Allende denounced the international aggression of which his country was victim. He received a standing ovation which lasted several minutes. That same year, he visited the Soviet Union, Mexico, Colombia and Cuba.

In 1973, at the March parliamentary elections, the Popular Unity Party obtained 45 percent of the vote and expanded its parliamentary representation.

The measures impelled by the Yankees in the two Houses to have the president dismissed met with failure. Imperialism and the Right intensified their all-out war against the Popular Unity government and unleashed acts of terrorism around the country.

I wrote Allende six confidential letters —I handwrote them in small print using a fine-point pen—between 1971 and 1973. In them, I took up issues of interest with the utmost discretion.

In May 21, I wrote him:

“(…) We’re amazed at your extraordinary efforts and the limitless energies you've poured into maintaining and consolidating your victory.

“Here, we can appreciate that the people are gaining ground, in spite of the difficult and complex mission they shoulder.

“The April 4 elections were a splendid and encouraging victory.

“Your courage and resolve, your mental and physical energy and ability to carry the revolutionary process forward, have been of the essence.

"Great and different challenges are surely in store for you, and you must face these in conditions which are not precisely ideal, but a just policy, with the support of the people and applied with determination, cannot be defeated (...)"

On September 11, 1971, I wrote:

“The carrier will travel to discuss the details of the visit with you.

“Initially, considering that a direct flight in a Cubana airliner is possible, we deemed it convenient to travel to Arica and to begin the tour at the north. Two things then come up: the interest you and Velazco Alvarado have expressed in a potential contact during my trip there; the possibility of using a Soviet IL-62 plane with greater capacity. If we opted for this, this would allow us to travel directly to Santiago by air.

“I am including an itinerary for the tour and activities. You may add, remove or introduce whatever modifications you deem appropriate.

“I have focused exclusively on what might prove of political interest and have not concerned myself much about the pace or intensity of the work, but we await your opinions and considerations on absolutely everything.

“We were very pleased with the extraordinary success you had in your trip to Ecuador, Colombia and Peru. When will we, in Cuba, have the opportunity to share in the heartfelt emotion and the warmth with which Ecuadorians, Colombians and Peruvians welcomed you?"

During that trip, whose itinerary I had conveyed to President Allende, my life was miraculously spared. I walked dozens of miles before an immense crowd, standing by the side of the road. The Central Intelligence Agency had organized three actions to ensure my assassination during the trip. At an interview for the press which had been previously coordinated, Cuban mercenaries, who had entered Chile with Venezuelan passports had a camera, supplied by a Venezuelan television broadcaster, equipped with automatic weapons. Ultimately, they were not brave enough, they who had only to pull the trigger at any point during the lengthy interview, while the cameras were on me. They did not want to risk death. What's more, they had chased me down all around Chile, where they had not been able to have me as close and vulnerable as at that moment. I was to learn of the details of the cowardly action only years later. US Special Services had gone further than what we had imagined.

On February 4, 1972, I wrote Salvador:

“The greatest care was put into receiving the military delegation here. The Revolutionary Armed Forces devoted practically all of their time during those days to look after it. The gatherings were cordial and fraternal. The program was intense and varied. My impression is that the trip has been positive and useful, that it is possible and convenient to continue organizing such exchanges.

“I spoke with Ariel about the idea of your trip. I can understand perfectly well that the intense work ahead of you and the tone of the political struggle in recent weeks have not allowed you to schedule the trip for the approximate date we mentioned on that occasion. It is clear we had not taken these eventualities into account. That day, on the eve of my return to Cuba, when we dined in your house in the early morning hours, having little time and in the haste of the moment, it was reassuring for me to think that we would again meet in Cuba, where we would have the opportunity to converse at length. Nevertheless, I still harbor the hope that you can consider scheduling your visit for some time before May. I mention this month because, mid-May, at the latest, I must make a trip, which can no longer be postponed, to Algiers, Guinea, Bulgaria, other countries and the Soviet Union. This long tour will demand considerable time.

“I am immensely thankful for your impressions on the situation there. Here, more familiarized with, interested in and very much moved by the process Chile is experiencing each day, we are following the news that reach us very attentively. Today, we can better understand the affection and passion that the Cuban revolution must have inspired in others at the beginning. You could say we are re-living our own experience, from the outside.

“In your letter, I can appreciate the magnificent state of mind, serenity and courage with which you are determined to confront the challenges ahead. And that is of the essence in any revolutionary process, particularly one undertaken in the highly complex and difficult conditions of a country like Chile. I took away with me a very strong impression of the moral, cultural and human virtues of the Chilean people and of its notable patriotic and revolutionary sentiment. You have the singular privilege of being its guide at this decisive point in the history of Chile and America, the culmination of an entire life devoted to the struggle, as you said at the stadium, devoted to the cause of the revolution and socialism. There are no obstacles that cannot be surmounted. Someone once said that, in a revolution, one moves forward 'with audacity, audacity and more audacity’. I am convinced of the profound truth of that axiom."

I wrote President Allende again on September 6, 1972:

“I sent you a message on different matters with Beatriz. After she left and, in response to the news that reached us all last week, we decided to send comrade Osmany to reiterate our willingness to help in any way, and so that you can convey to us, through him, your impression of the situation and your ideas about the scheduled trip to this and other countries. The pretext for Osmany's trip will be the inspection of the Cuban embassy, but this will not be publicly announced. We want his stay there to be as brief and discrete as possible.

“Work is already underway with respect to the points you made through Beatriz (...)

“Though we are conscious of the current difficulties faced by Chile’s revolutionary process, we are confident you will find the way to overcome these.

“You can rely on our full cooperation. A fraternal and revolutionary salute from all of us goes out to you."

On June 30, 1973, we sent President Salvador Allende and the Popular Unity parties an official invitation to participate at the ceremonies organized to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the attack on the Moncada Garrison.

In another letter, I wrote him:

“Salvador:

“The above is the official, formal invitation to the ceremonies in commemoration of the 20th anniversary. It would be formidable if you could hop over to Cuba on that date. You can imagine what this would mean in terms of joy, satisfaction and honor for Cubans. I know that this depends, more than anything, on your work and the situation there. We leave it, then, to your consideration.

“We are still under the impact of the great revolutionary victory of the 29th and your brilliant, personal role in the events. It is natural for many difficulties and obstacles to subsist, but I am certain that this first trial, where you have come out successful, will encourage you and consolidate the people's confidence in you. These events have been attached special importance internationally and are considered a great triumph.

“With actions like those of the 29th, the Chilean revolution shall come out victorious of any test, no matter how hard. Again, Cuba is at your side and you can rely on your faithful friends of always."

On July 29, 1973, I wrote him my last letter:

“Dear Salvador:

“With the pretext of discussing matters concerning the meeting of Non-Aligned Countries with you, Carlos and Piñeiro will travel to Chile. The real objective is for you to inform them on the situation and to offer you, as always, the assurance of our willingness to help you face whatever difficulties and dangers stand in the way of the revolutionary process. Their stay will be very brief, as they have much pending work here and, not without sacrificing part of their time, we decided they should make the trip.

“I see that you are now facing the delicate question of a dialogue with the Christian Democrats, in the midst of serious developments, such as the brutal murder of your naval aide-de-camp and the new truck-drivers strike. I can therefore imagine the great tension and your interest in winning time, improving the balance of forces in case the struggle should break out and, if possible, find a path that will allow you to carry the revolutionary process forward without a civil war, as well as assuming your historical responsibility for what could happen. Those are commendable aims. But, should the other side, whose real intentions we are not in a position to assess from here, pursue a treacherous and irresponsible policy and demand a price that the Popular Unity Party and the revolution cannot pay, something which, in fact, is quite likely, do not for a minute forget the formidable strength of Chile's working class and the vigorous support they've shown you at all difficult moments. They can, at your call, defend the revolution in a moment of danger, paralyze the coup officers, impose their conditions on them and decide, once and for all, if it were necessary, Chile's fate. The enemy must be conscious of this fact; they must be on guard and ready to go into action. Its strength and combativeness can tilt the balance of forces in your favor, even when other conditions are not as favorable.

“Your decision to defend the process steadily and honor, at the cost of your own life, which everyone knows you are willing to sacrifice, shall bring all forces capable of fighting and all men and women of honor in Chile to your side. Your courage, serenity and audacity at this historical time for your country and, above all, your firm, resolved and heroic leadership, are crucial in this situation.

“Let Carlos and Manuel know how your loyal Cuban friends can help.

“Let me remind you of Cuba’s affection and unqualified confidence in you.”

I wrote this a month and a half before the coup. The emissaries were Carlos Rafael Rodríguez and Manuel Piñeiro.

Pinochet had talked with Carlos Rafael. He had feigned the kind of loyalty and firmness sworn by Carlos Prats, Army Commander in Chief for a time under the Popular Unity government, a dignified military man, who the oligarchy and imperialism brought to a total crisis, obliging him to resign, later murdered in Argentina by two DINA henchmen, following the fascist coup of 1973.

I had been mistrustful of Pinochet from the time I read the books on geopolitics he gave me as a gift during my visit to Chile and had the opportunity to observe his style up close, his declarations and the methods, as Army Chief, that he used when the provocations from the Right obliged President Allende to decree a state of siege in Santiago de Chile. I recalled what Marx had forewarned in the 18th Brumaire.

Many Army chiefs in the different regions and their general staffs wanted to converse with me wherever I was and showed considerable interest in issues related to our war of liberation and the experience of the Missile Crisis in 1962. The meetings, which lasted hours, would be held in the early morning, which was the only time I had available. I would agree to these to help Allende, to familiarize them with the idea that socialism was not an enemy of armed institutions. Pinochet, as a military leader, was not an exception. Allende considered those meetings useful.

On September 11, 1973, he died heroically, defending the Presidential Palace of La Moneda. He fought like a tiger until his last breath.

The revolutionaries who stood up to the fascist onslaught there would later recount incredible stories about those last moments. Their versions didn’t always agree, for they fought at different parts of the Palace. Also, some of their closest collaborators perished or were later assassinated during the intense and unequal battle.

The difference in the testimonies consisted in the fact that some affirmed he had fired his last shots at himself to avoid being taken prisoner and others that his death was brought about by enemy fire. The Palace was up in flames as a result of an attack perpetrated by tanks and planes which sought to consummate a coup they had considered an easy task that would meet with no resistance. There is no contradiction whatsoever between these two ways of answering the call of duty. In our wars of independence, there is more than one example of illustrious combatants who, when defeat was imminent, took their own lives to avoid falling prisoners.

Much remains to be said about what we were willing to do for Allende. Some have written about this, but it is not the aim of these lines.

Allende was born one hundred years ago today. His example shall live on.



Fidel Castro Ruz

June 26, 2008

6:34 p.m.

(Translated by ESTI)]]> Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:28:00 EDT http://zephyr.tigblog.org/post/399771 25.0833333 -77.35 25.0833333 -77.35 http://zephyr.tigblog.org/post/399069 By NAVARDO SAUNDERS -
Nassau, Bahamas:




The government wants to amend the law to give judges the power to sentence child rapists to life in prison, according to Attorney General Claire Hepburn.

Speaking at the recent Chamber of Commerce 2nd Annual "Meet the Ministers Forum", Senator Hepburn said the government wants amended the Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Act.

"The law as it is now, the judges are only able, where there is a first offence, to sentence up to seven years and we are now proposing to amend that so that the courts would have jurisdiction to give up to life imprisonment," she said.

"But of course not that they would get life imprisonment, but so that the maximum penalty is that and the court will have to take into consideration all of the facts of the case to determine what ought to be the proper penalty."

The government believes that in many instances the seven-year maximum sentence is insufficient, considering that child rape is a most heinous crime, Senator Hepburn said.

The issue of child pornography is also of concern, she indicated.

"There will be major consequences for those who exploit and abuse children," Senator Hepburn said. "We have to send a strong message that it will not be tolerated."

Senator Hepburn’s comments drew applause from the businesspeople attending the Ministers forum.

Her comments came on the heels of a well-known children’s advocate in Grand Bahama calling for stiffer penalties for child predators.

Rev. Glenroy Bethel, the spokesperson for the families of Grand Bahama’s five missing boys who were murdered in 2003, recently called on the government to enact tougher legislation to punish child rapists and murders.

Rev. Bethel, whose son was also brutally murdered, said a message must be sent that violence against children will not be tolerated. (His son’s murder was not connected to the missing boys’ case.)

A combined funeral for the five boys will be held in Grand Bahama July 5.

Senator Hepburn was joined at the forum by six of her cabinet colleagues, who answered questions businesspeople had about various matters, including crime, the economy and the rising cost of living.

The attorney general said the government also wants amended the Penal Code and Criminal Procedure Code Act to allow judges to hand down stiffer penalties in cases where people are found guilty of aiding and abetting.

"The government will amend the law for the offence of accessory after the fact," Senator Hepburn said.

"You would be familiar from reading the newspapers that oftentimes persons escape custody or the police are looking for someone and they can’t find them and it turns out that some friend, family, girlfriend whoever it is, would have been hiding them, giving them sustenance, aiding them in their attempts to avoid arrest – that is an offence."

June 30, 2008]]> Mon, 30 Jun 2008 11:15:00 EDT http://zephyr.tigblog.org/post/399069 25.0833333 -77.35 25.0833333 -77.35 http://zephyr.tigblog.org/post/398503


The discredited way in which the European Union suspended its sanctions on Cuba on June 19 has been reported in 16 international press dispatches. It has absolutely no economic effect on our country. On the contrary, the United States' extraterritorial laws and, thus, its economic and financial blockade are still fully in effect.

At my age and given my state of health, one cannot be sure of the time one has left to live. Nevertheless, I want to express my contempt for the immense hypocrisy of that decision. Such hypocrisy is made all the more evident by the brutal European measure to expel illegal immigrants from Latin American countries, some of which have populations which, in their majority, are of European origin. Immigrants are also the fruit of colonial, semi-colonial and capitalist exploitation.

In the name of human rights, Cuba is asked to grant impunity to those who would bind the feet and hands of the homeland and its people and hand them over to imperialism.

Even Mexican authorities have to admit that the Miami-based mob, at the service of the U.S. government, used force to snatch from the hands of an important contingent of migratory agents, or bought, dozens of illegal immigrants who had been arrested in Quintana Roo, including innocent children transported by force across risk-laden seas and mothers obliged to emigrate. Traffickers of human beings, like drug traffickers, who take advantage of the largest and most coveted of the world’s markets, have undermined the authority and moral statute needed by any government to lead the State, spilling Latin American blood everywhere, to say nothing of those who die trying to emigrate by climbing over the humiliating border wall erected over what was once Mexican territory.

The food and energy crises, climate change and inflation are scourging the world's nations. As political helplessness prevails, ignorance and illusions tend to flourish. Not one of these governments, let alone those of the Czech Republic and Sweden, which were firmly opposed to the European Union’s decision, was able to give coherent answers to the questions that have been put on the table.

All the while, in Cuba, the mercenaries and traitors at the empire's service are at their wit’s end and throw up their hands in horror, defending the right to treachery and impunity.

I have many more things to say, but let this suffice for today. It is not my intention to trouble others with these words, but, as long as I am alive, I continue to think about these things.

I shall publish this reflection on the Internet only, today, June 20, 2008.

Fidel Castro



1:55 p.m.
(Translated by ESTI)]]> Sun, 29 Jun 2008 10:15:00 EDT http://zephyr.tigblog.org/post/398503 25.0833333 -77.35 25.0833333 -77.35 http://zephyr.tigblog.org/post/398057


We know that people living in industrialized and wealthy countries spend, on average, 25% of their income on food. Those who live in nations which were condemned to economic underdevelopment by the former devote up to 80% of their income to this end. Many go physically hungry and endure immense social disparities. Unemployment rates are usually two to three times higher; infant mortality rates are even higher, and life expectancy is as little as two-thirds that which is reported in rich countries. This system is simply genocidal.

In the reflection I wrote three days ago, I stated: "Our country has demonstrated that it can stand up to all pressures and help other peoples”. Could Europe affirm the same thing?

A UNESCO report published yesterday, June 20, states that a 2-year study conducted with over 200,000 children from 16 countries places Cuba as Latin America's number one country in terms of third grade mathematics and reading and sixth grade mathematics and science, with over 100 points above the regional average. This is the second time Cuba is thus recognized by UNESCO.

It is reasonable to assume that no country where human rights are systematically violated can reach such high educational levels.

Why has Cuba been blockaded for 50 years?

Why is it the object of slander?

Why is it barred from all access to technical and scientific information?

Why do they seek to take it back to an unsustainable economic and social system which offers no answers whatsoever to humanity's problems?

There is a reason millions of Bolivian, Ecuadorian, Uruguayan, Argentinean, Brazilian, Central American and other Latin American citizens have immigrated to Europe, from which they can now be brutally returned to their countries of origin if they fail to meet the requirements set by the new anti-immigrant laws.

What's worse: figures several times larger of Mexican, Central and South American citizens have emigrated to the United States, crossing borders, walls and seas, without any kind of documentation or any Adjustment Act that privileges them or encourages them to emigrate. Of them, 500 die each year. In addition to this, thousands perish every year in Mexico and Central America, victims of organized crime, in the struggle to control the drug market in the United States, where its highest authorities are unable and unwilling to combat drug use.

Assistant attorney José Luis Santiago Vasconcelos declared that human trafficking is the second most profitable illegal activity in the world. In the case of Cubans, profits are comparable to those of drug-trafficking: "They charge as much as 10,000 dollars per person.”

The money comes from the United States. I don't believe Mexico can become a haven for the trafficking of immigrants, as even US coast guards intercept and return those who are captured at sea.

Mexico is not obliged to accept having a version of the dry-foot wet-foot policy imposed on it.

There is no organized crime in Cuba or any kind of impunity for drug-trafficking. It has combated both efficiently, without resorting to a blood bath. Only hypocrisy explains why the United States hasn't acknowledged this fact.

I did not write an anti-Europe diatribe, I simply wrote the truth. It is not my fault if the truth proves offensive.

To keep yesterday's reflection short, I did not even mention weapons exports, military spending and NATO's military adventures, let alone the secret flights and Europe's complicity in the acts of torture perpetrated by the United States.

I have no knowledge of anyone having been arrested anywhere in the country for breaking the law. That has nothing to do with the reflection which I asked be published exclusively on Cubadebate. Any connection is totally arbitrary. I will make use of this Internet site as I deem appropriate. I shan't try anyone's patience. I don't make a cent doing this, I work for free.

I am not, nor will ever be, the leader of a faction or splinter group. No one has any reason to assume, therefore, that there are inner struggles in the Party. If I write, it is because I continue to struggle, in the name of the convictions I have defended all of my life.

Fidel Castro Ruz



June 21, 2008
1:34 p.m.

(Translated by ESTI)]]> Sat, 28 Jun 2008 09:57:00 EDT http://zephyr.tigblog.org/post/398057 25.0833333 -77.35 25.0833333 -77.35 http://zephyr.tigblog.org/post/397057 By Sasha L. Lightbourne -
Nassau, Bahamas:



However, some – including members of Bahamians Agitating for a Referendum on Free Trade (BARF) – have argued that it amounts to The Bahamas giving up its sovereignty.

Minister of State for Finance Zhivargo Laing explained to members of parliament during a luncheon at British Colonial Hilton Hotel on Wednesday what the government’s position is on the EPA.

"We are trying to brief parliamentarians on the development, the history, the status of the Economic Partnership Agreement to date," he said.

"We need to have them understand what the consultation process is with the Trade Commission, to understand what the structure of the agreement is, to understand what the commitments and obligations The Bahamas might have in the agreement, what the commitment and obligations on the part of the European community will be, and also to try to speak to some of the concerns and fears that Bahamians may have expressed."

Mr. Laing said more consultation will be done in informal settings between the government and opposition and then the public will be duly informed.

"We are organizing town meetings for the public and expect for them to begin as early as July," he said. "Those meetings will be extended into August and September, so the public needs to listen out for the dates and locations."

He said target areas for the government are Over-the-Hill communities as well as some of the Family Islands, including Grand Bahama, Abaco, Eleuthera, Andros and Long Island.

Telecommunications, construction, real estate, fisheries and agriculture are all areas that will be reserved for Bahamian citizens under the EPA, the minister said.

Leader of the Opposition and former prime minister, Perry Christie, shared his initial reaction to Mr. Laing’s presentation.

"We welcome the presentation because we really wanted to see what had developed since we left office on the EPA," he said.

"It was informative to hear what the minister had to say because we realize that the government has yet to make a final decision based on its own considerations and considerations of the private sector groups who they are consulting."

Mr. Christie told the Journal that the Opposition is looking forward to a determination by the government on the EPA.

"We anticipate that determination as to what is going to evolve because a lot of people are on edge in the services sector to see whether or not their own interests will be protected as they seem to suggest here," he said. "The Opposition will still have to take a wait and see approach."

Mr. Christie said however that he was pleased that the presentation took place.

"This is the kind of thing we tried to do in our term where there is parliamentary consultation as well so that we can minimize the extent to which we divide on a matter of this kind or not divide at all," he said. "The level of consultation that takes place between opposition and government needs to increase.

"This is a countrywide matter and this was a very good step taken by the government of The Bahamas."

The Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (CRNM) has indicated that it completed its own internal reflections on the EPA negotiations with the aim of identifying core elements of the EPA process that have worked for the region and those which may be improved and incorporated into future negotiations.

It concluded that strengthening the consultation components of the negotiating process is "inextricably linked to ensuring the optimum engagement with and participation of key stakeholders, particularly the private sector, whose input is critical to the formulation of the negotiating agenda and strategy."

The CRNM also urged increased emphasis on increasing the allocation of resources to facilitate private sector engagement and to build the capacity of firms to identify and articulate defensive and offensive interests in external trade negotiations.

June 26, 2008]]> Thu, 26 Jun 2008 21:44:00 EDT http://zephyr.tigblog.org/post/397057 25.0833333 -77.35 25.0833333 -77.35 http://zephyr.tigblog.org/post/395907 By INDERIA SAUNDERS, Guardian Business Desk -
Nassau, Bahamas:



WASHINGTON, DC — The Bahamas may have missed out on the Caribbean's most bullish tourism market ever, with no one other than Alan Greenspan telling industry insiders a record numbers of Americans headed south in March — the same month Nassau saw a decrease in the number of visitors.

Still the most revered man to hold the U.S. Federal Reserve's top post, the economist told Caribbean leaders Monday that the latest American flight data shows the highest level of traffic to the Caribbean in history.

The news came as quite a surprise, he admitted, considering the decline in the U.S. economy and the tightening effect it's had on the purse strings of Americans.

"We don't publish the data within [specific destinations in] the Caribbean, but the suspicion is its dispersing over the wide Caribbean," Greenspan explained. "I was surprised to see latest data shows it's only marginally below one previous month in 2006 [and] I would have expected to find numbers down a bit."

Even a casual look at Bahamian reports for last March suggest the destination was not among those on the receiving end of that step-up in business.

While visitor arrivals were not down per say in The Bahamas, according to the Ministry of Tourism's latest data, in March The Bahamas saw a mere 0.1 percentage increase in air and sea arrivals, roughly 300 more tourists than those who touched down or sailed in during the same period a year earlier.

The hike from 500,086 visitors in March 2007 to 500,388 arrivals the same month this year considers visitors to all of the islands in the archipelago. It also illustrates the problems facing New Providence and Grand Bahama, which registered overall declines that month of 0.6 and 18 percent, respectively.

Greenspan, who served under the last four presidents and is increasing drawing blame for failing to prevent the subprime mortgage meltdown, argues March's increased traffic is an outlying blip. April actually marked a further deterioration of the U.S. economy, growth in job losses and a retreat from consumer spending.

American consumer confidence has also since fallen off. In fact, new Conference Board numbers suggest that key barometer of economic health fell in June to its lowest in 16 years as inflation rose. All and all, it suggests The Bahamas may ultimately face a summer season marked by further challenges to the country's bottom line. That's despite a whack of new money — the bulk of $4 million — thrown into marketing early this year. About $9 million more is on the way.

Greenspan's analysis may run counter to the opinions of many Bahamian hoteliers who, according to Frank Comito of the Bahamas Hotel Association, are looking forward to a strong summer. That season is traditionally the slowest for the destination.

Still, the possibility of arrival declines is a trend the famous American economist believes may extend beyond that narrow window.

"These are extraordinary times for most everybody, especially those involved in trying to attract tourism to the Caribbean," Greenspan said. "I think you're having troubles now and will continue to have them, but tourists will find a way to your area."

One of the things that the region would have to work on to achieve this, he said, is to improve the price of tickets to Caribbean destinations, which have recently undergone unprecedented hikes due to soaring oil prices.

"If you cannot get the cost per mile travel down, it will impact negatively on Caribbean tourism," Greenspan said. "[Getting that in order] may not happen as quickly as everyone would like."]]> Wed, 25 Jun 2008 04:04:00 EDT http://zephyr.tigblog.org/post/395907 25.0833333 -77.35 25.0833333 -77.35 http://zephyr.tigblog.org/post/395419 By INDERIA SAUNDERS, Guardian Business Desk -
Nassau, Bahamas:



WASHINGTON, DC — Bahamian exporters can now breathe a sigh of relief with Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham announcing a two-year extension to the Caribbean Basin Initiative, likely just enough time for the creation of a reciprocal trade pact to replace it and satisfy South American countries calling for a level-playing field.

In an interview with Guardian Business yesterday, Ingraham said last week's Caribbean Heads of Government meetings with Charlie Rangel, chairman of the House of Representatives Ways and Means committee, were quite productive. Anxiety the CBI would fail to win that extra time has apparently now been eased ahead of the U.S. elections in November.

"It's been extended (and) the (change in) administration will not affect it because it's an act of Congress," he said. "CARICOM and The Bahamas continue to seek to get improvement to the benefit, but the existing arrangement will continue for another two years from here on."

Just last week, it appeared likely that it would either fall to U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama or his GOP rival, John McCain, to push through Congress an extension for that comprehensive trade pact granting Bahamian goods unfettered access to the U.S. while allowing us to tax American goods to the tune of $600 million annually. A promise by President George Bush to do the same seemed to have gone nowhere since a similar meeting a year ago, one followed by discussions with Rangel.

And while the agreement has indeed been extended during the Bush administration, the agreement will ultimately be replaced with a reciprocal one in keeping with World Trade Organization standards, forcing Caribbean nations to lower or remove duties on U.S. goods.

However, The Bahamas and the rest of the Caribbean argue they need time to fully prepare for that sea-change. They appear to have now bought themselves that time.

The news should be welcomed by Grand Bahama's Polymers, a Styrofoam manufacturer, and, to a much lesser extent, seafood exporters. The former depends on that international agreement to ensure the price competitiveness of its product on the American market. It has in fact hinted that without the preferential pact — first floated as a way of allowing Caribbean nations to deepen their economies — it would be forced to quit The Bahamas.

They're alarm bells that were first sounded last year in the build-up to signing of the Economic Partnership Agreement between CARICOM countries and the European Union.

That reciprocal agreement was considered key to protecting seafood exports to that crucial market as well as Bacardi rum shipments leaving the Nassau distillery. That company has since announced its intention to fly the Bahamian coup despite concessions won with the EPA.

It's something the government will likely study as it looks at the pro and cons of signing onto a replacement to the CBI, which would do little more than protect Polymers and a modest number of jobs at its Freeport facility while forcing this country to give up hundreds of millions in import duties on U.S. goods.

Professional associations like the Bahamas Institute of Chartered Accountants are now working toward mapping out their own individual bargaining positions for talks with U.S. negotiators. They're also looking for the government to provide them with the kind of technical expertise they now lack.

Still, with the Ingraham administration's suggestion it will seek WTO membership, which would virtually compel it to abandon its schedule of customs duties, it seems increasingly likely The Bahamas will sign onto that CBI replacement. The move would come despite comments from the Minister of State for Finance Zhivargo Laing, suggesting the country would be ill-prepared to give up those tax revenues in order to protect one or two exporters like Polymers.

The government would likely have to bring in a VAT or income tax system to make up for the revenue loss, although in its 2008-09 budget the government has already moved to protect some of that money by switching the point of taxation on some goods from the border to inland.

One thing's for certain; the clock is ticking on the current agreement, with at least two South American countries prepared to press their case for an immediate end to the CBI with WTO officials. It's unclear whether Rangel's assurances can effectively keep them at bay, considering the CBI has already formally ended. It is in fact already on an extension.

While Obama has voiced his intentions to assist his Caribbean brothers and sisters, it is unlikely he or McCain will offer unending support for the agreement in its current format. It is a deal with very obvious benefits for the Caribbean with no real counterbalance for their single largest trading partner, the U.S.

On Monday, Ingraham said the group of regional heads were in meetings for hours before coming to a decision on this and a number of other topics.

Other discussion points include investment opportunities the Caribbean has to offer Wall Street "movers and shakers."

While the exact details of these talks are still not clear, Guardian Business understands that Caribbean heads have all expressed a desire for a single CARICOM stock exchange. In the past, Laing has rejected the idea of Bahamian participation, perhaps another indication of just how up in the air this country's position on any future free trade agreements really is.]]> Tue, 24 Jun 2008 07:15:00 EDT http://zephyr.tigblog.org/post/395419 25.0833333 -77.35 25.0833333 -77.35 http://zephyr.tigblog.org/post/394655


Homosexuals are human beings and certainly, without a doubt, God loves them all. God does not like homosexual practices, but he did come to earth to die for all, including the homosexual. John 3:16 says "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."

God's love to us is unconditional. However, we must accept his love and allow the transforming power of his love to make a difference in lives. I love the way God deals with sinners and hurting people. He accepts us where we are, then empowers us to transform our lives. In other words, God's unconditional love is not transforming until we open our hearts and minds to Him. God will never force us to do or be anything. Yet, he still loves us.

Over the years I have dedicated this column to the healing of individuals and families. I am writing about homosexuality because there are many homosexuals and lesbians in our country who are hurting, confused, and desperately crying out for help. Yes, there are others who are not so interested for such help. They have decided to accept their sexual orientation as "natural", and many of them would say "it is a gift from God." Although I am confident the homosexuality is not a gift from God, and certainly not natural, these individuals must make their own choices, even in the face of biblical, biological, social, and psychological facts against homosexuality. There are many homosexuals who want freedom from homosexuality. I have no doubt that homosexuals can change. There are many who can testify to that.


AFRAID TO SEEK HELP

There are many male and female homosexuals who are afraid to come out of the closet and seek help because they feel that they will not be accepted and will be treated with disdain. Our responsibility as descent Christian citizens are to respect and love everyone in spite of their sexual orientation.

We need not encourage their homosexual practices, but we can support their basic human rights which they are entitled to under the constitution of The Commonwealth of The Bahamas. We all have (including the homosexual) a right to life, liberty, and the security of person.

WE CAN'T ALWAYS TELL

Ironically, many of us who are so angry toward homosexuals, are often not aware that a person they have communicated with for years on the job, at church, or in the community, might also be a homosexual. Although a healthy friendship would have developed over the years, as soon as they find out that their "friend" is a homosexual their attitude changes toward them. Unfortunately, to them their friend is no longer a friend, but a "disgusting homosexual" who does not deserve to be respected. This is sad.


WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE SHOW ME A HOMOSEXUAL?

It is difficult to identify most homosexuals. Some homosexuals get married to cover up their orientation. Others keep their activities discreetly limited to a select group of individuals. We can't always tell who's who. First impressions are not always true, and you can't truly judge a book by its cover. Most homosexuals are not effeminate. In fact, research tells us that about 85 percent of effeminate men are not homosexuals. They are usually dedicated, committed, and loving husbands and fathers.

It is a terrible mistake to attribute the soft voice, gentle walk, and hand motions, to a homosexual. The homosexual can be that incredible hulk-of-a-man you admire, the masculine boss, the most enjoyable person on the job, the charming secretary, the committed father or mother, the affectionate spouse, or the most beautiful.

Not all homosexuals accost or flirt with other people. What then is my point? While we speak out against homosexuality, we must find ways of keeping the lines of communication open between us. Why change our attitude towards someone simply because we learned something different about the person, especially when the person has never caused harm to you or made you feel uncomfortable in his or her presence.

Sometimes it is wise to adjust our ways of relating to each other when there are serious lifestyles differences we believe that are not wholesome. However, we need not ostracize or belittle someone just because we are sure our lifestyle and sexual orientation is the right one.

MISPLACED ANGER

It is my opinion that too many of us straight people are angry for the wrong reasons. What about the adult men who rape innocent adolescent girls? What about the 41-old husband who has sex with 16-year-old high school females? What about the fathers who molest infant sons and daughters?

What about the mothers who sexually molest their children? What about the adult women who prey on the hearts and bodies of young teenage boys? What about the countless women who are raped each week in our county? What about the married partners who cheat on each other?

Why are we not raising our angry voices against these atrocities?


n See God on L4

While we do not want to see two adult men hugging and kissing in public, yet we seem not to get angry at the heterosexual licentious behavior we see exhibited in our public buildings, school grounds, political halls, and church corridors. All indecent public behavior, whether between heterosexuals or homosexuals is wrong and must come to an end.

Even many homosexuals themselves often misunderstand the straight person when he or she speaks out against homosexuality. Once you say homosexuality is wrong then you are demonstrating a homophobic attitude. This is not true with everyone. We can learn to love someone who chooses a direction in life we do not agree with. We can learn to accept people for whom they are. There are many Bahamian mothers and fathers who have a great difficulty in accepting their homosexual children as their own and still are against their lifestyle. We need strength from God to love everyone, even our enemies.

SEXUAL ACTIVITIES ARE THE SAME

Years ago we believed that AIDS was mostly a homosexual phenomenon. AIDS is growing faster among heterosexuals today. Anal sex, an unusual sexual activity practiced by most homosexuals, is also very common among heterosexuals. In fact many straight teenagers engage in anal sex to avoid pregnancy. While some hate homosexuals because of their sexual orientation, they are still involved in a very "homosexual act" — anal sex. How hypocritical we are!

YOU CAN FIND HELP

If you would like to find out more information about freedom over homosexuality or for books and materials on homosexuality, write to Exodus International P.O. Box 77652, Seattle, Washington, 98177, or call 206 784 7799.


Send your questions or comments to Barrington H. Brennen, question@soencouragement.org or call 1-305-767 4976 or 1-242-323 8772, or snail mail: P.O. Box N-896, Nassau, The Bahamas.]]> Mon, 23 Jun 2008 08:43:00 EDT http://zephyr.tigblog.org/post/394655 25.0833333 -77.35 25.0833333 -77.35 http://zephyr.tigblog.org/post/392477

IT would seem there's no topic worthy of addressing that would not bore our patient readers, after the “Round Table” program of June 12, which dealt with the new edition of a book published in Bolivia 15 years ago, featuring now a prologue I wrote. During this program, an introduction was also read written at a later date by Evo Morales and a message from the prestigious Argentinean writer Stella Calloni, to be included in an upcoming edition. I had carefully chosen the information I used for that prologue.

A powerful internationalist spirit, which had its roots in the broad contingent of Cuban combatants who participated in the anti-fascist struggle of the Spanish people and made the best traditions of the world worker's movement its own, had developed in Cuba in the first years of the Revolution.

We are not in the habit of publicizing our cooperative efforts with other peoples, but it is at times impossible to prevent the press from mentioning it. Our cooperative efforts stem from profound feelings that have nothing to do with a desire for publicity.

Some ask themselves how it is possible for a small country with scarce resources to carry out tasks of such magnitude in fields as decisive as education and health, without which contemporary society is unthinkable.

Humanity developed the goods and services essential to its existence since establishing its first society, and the latter has in turn developed from the most elementary to the most sophisticated of forms over many thousands of years.

The exploitation of man by man was inseparable from this development, as we all know or ought to know.

The different ways in which this reality has been perceived have always depended on the place each of us occupies within society. For long, exploitation was seen as something natural and the immense majority was never aware of the above relation.

At the very height of capitalist development in England, which was a world leader, next to the United States and other countries in Europe, in a world that was already dominated by colonialism and expansionism, a great thinker and history and economics scholar, Karl Marx, on the basis of the ideas of the most prestigious German philosophers and economists of the time –including Hegel, Adam Smith and David Ricardo, with whom he disagreed– elaborated, wrote and published his ideas on capitalism’s relations of production and exchange in 1859 in a work titled Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. In 1867, he continued to spread his ideas with the publication of the first volume of his most important work, a work that made him famous: Capital. Most of the long book, on the basis of Marx’s notes and comments, was edited by Engels, who shared Marx’s ideas and, like a prophet, spread his work after Marx’s death in 1883.

What Marx published constitutes the most serious analysis ever to be written about class society and the exploitation of man by man. Marxism had thus been born, as the foundation of revolutionary parties and movements that proclaimed socialism as their objective, including nearly all social-democratic parties that, when World War I broke out, betrayed the slogan proclaimed by Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto, first published in 1848: "Workers of the world, unite!”

One of the truths that this great thinker expressed in simple terms was that: “In social production during their lives, men establish certain necessary relations independent of their wills, relations of production which correspond to a given phase of development of their material productive forces. It is not man’s consciousness which determines its being, but on the contrary, it is its social being which determines its consciousness. On reaching a given phase of development, society's material productive forces come into contradiction with existing production relations...From forms of development of the productive forces, these relations become obstacles to the latter and an era of social revolution thus begins...No social formation disappears before its productive forces are fully developed and no new and more advanced production relations emerge before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the old society.”

I could not find better words to more clearly and precisely express these concepts elaborated by Marx, concepts whose essence, with a basic explanation from a teacher, even one of the young Cubans who joined the Union of Young Communists this past Saturday June 14th could understand.

To describe the concrete development of the class struggle, Marx wrote The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850 and The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, two excellent historical analyses that delight any reader. He was a true genius.

Lenin, a profound continuator of dialectical thought and Marx’s research, wrote two key works: State and Revolution and Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Marx’s ideas, put into practice by Lenin through the October Revolution, were also developed by Mao Zedong and other Third World revolutionary leaders. Without them, the Cuban Revolution would not have taken place in the United States’ backyard.

Had Marxist thought simply limited itself to the idea that “no social formation disappears before its productive forces are fully developed,” the capitalist theoretician Francis Fukuyama would have been right in proclaiming that the collapse of the Soviet Union marked the end of history and ideologies and that all resistance to the capitalist system of production should cease.

When the founder of scientific socialism published his ideas, society’s productive forces were far from fully developed. Technology had not yet yielded deadly weapons of mass destruction capable of exterminating the human species; the aerospatial domain did not yet exist, nor did the unlimited squandering of hydrocarbons and non-renewable fossil fuels; climate change had not yet been detected in a natural world whose potential seemed infinite to humanity, nor had the world food crisis, to be borne by innumerable combustion engines and a population six times larger than that which inhabited the planet on the year Marx was born (then of one billion), made itself known yet.

Cuba's socialist experience takes place at a time when imperial domination has expanded across the globe.

When I speak of consciousness I am not referring to a will capable of changing reality but, on the contrary, to knowledge of objective reality which can determine the path to follow.

Tens of million of people died in the war sparked in the mid-20th century by fascism, an ideology which was new at the time, born in the anti-Marxist bosom of the developed capitalist world Lenin had foretold.

In Cuba, as in other Third World countries, the struggle for national liberation, under the leadership of the middle classes and petite bourgeoisie, and the struggle for socialism that the most advanced sectors of the working class and farmers had been waging over the years, combined and strengthened one another. Ideological and class contradictions also flourished. Objective and subjective factors varied considerably from one process to another.

The United Nations and other international organizations, where many saw the beginning of a new, international consciousness, emerged from the last world war. Those hopes were betrayed.

Fascism, whose instrument Hitler called the National Socialist Party, was re-born, more powerful and threatening than ever.

The empire deploys and keeps aircraft carriers in all of the world's seas, ever ready for military intervention. What does it decide to do in order to compete with Cuba in our hemisphere? To deploy an enormous ship turned into a floating hospital that works ten days in each country. It can assist a number of people daily but it cannot solve a country’s problems. It does not compensate for the brain drain, and it cannot train the specialists who are needed so that real medical services may be offered on any day of the week and year. All of the world's aircraft carriers, which today are instruments of military intervention deployed across the world's oceans, working as hospitals, could not offer those services to the millions of people treated by Cuban doctors in remote corners of the planet, where women go into labor, children are born and there are sick people in urgent need of attention.

Our country has demonstrated that it can stand up to all pressures and help other peoples.

I was thinking about our cooperative efforts, not only in Bolivia, but in Haiti, the Caribbean, several countries in Central America, South America, Africa and even distant Oceania, 20 thousand kilometers away. I also recalled the missions undertaken by the Henry Reeve Brigade, which responded to serious emergencies, traveling in our planes, transporting personnel and other resources.

We are not far from reaching the figure of one million people annually operated on for sight problems, free of charge. Can the United States really compete with Cuba?

We will make use of computers, not to create weapons of mass destruction and exterminate people but to convey knowledge to other peoples. From the economic point of view, the development of the intelligence and conscience of our fellow citizens, made possible by the Revolution, allow us not only to aid those in most need at no cost to us, but also to export specialized services, including healthcare services, to countries that have more resources than our own. In this field, the United States will never be able to compete with Cuba.

Our small country shall continue to hold its ground.

In one phrase: The ant has proved mightier than the elephant!

Fidel Castro Ruz

June 18, 2008

7:35 p.m.

(Translated by ESTI)]]> Thu, 19 Jun 2008 15:24:00 EDT http://zephyr.tigblog.org/post/392477 25.0833333 -77.35 25.0833333 -77.35 http://zephyr.tigblog.org/post/391545 By JASMIN BONIMY, Guardian Staff Reporter -
Nassau, Bahamas:




More than two dozen illegal immigrants have been arrested and deported in the past six months for suspicion of prostitution, but officials admitted yesterday that it is just a glimpse into a much larger problem.

Director of Immigration Vernon Burrows told The Guardian that his department has received reports about non-Bahamian nationals participating in local prostitution rings.

"There is not a significant number," said Burrows. "The Department of Immigration has made some arrests ourselves of some 31 females, not all at once, but over a period of time, who might have been involved in prostitution. There is no significant number but we believe there is far more than we detected."

In the past year, two major busts involving prostitution dens that specialize in supplying 'johns' with non-residents have occurred in the capital. Most recently, a brothel on West Bay Street was shut down on Monday after a police and immigration raid.

Burrows said yesterday that three of the eight women taken into custody at the former Mayfair Hotel on Monday have been repatriated. Five Jamaicans and three Haitian nationals were arrested by police for allegedly working at the brothel, which operated less than 20 feet away from the Fort Charlotte Police Station.

ASP Oscar Sands, officer in charge of the Fort Charlotte Police Station, responded to criticisms that the prostitution ring was allowed to operate so close to a law enforcement agency. He told our news team that he was made aware of the illegal activities when he was assigned at the northern station just three months ago.

"We had to go through the necessary government agencies. As a police officer I didn't want to violate anyone's constitutional rights, so rather than doing that I did my homework with them, and all the while they thought they were getting away with it," said the police officer. "Once I had gotten the information that was necessary for me, I decided to go in and deal with the matter."

In the meantime, Burrows revealed that the Immigration Department has also shut down prostitution rings that operated out of private residences.

"We have some people that we arrested in various apartments that we believe might have been operating as a brothel," explained Burrows.

The Immigration official added that prostitution is not only plaguing The Bahamas. According to him, women are being brought into other Caribbean nations in order to sell their bodies for profit.

"When I speak with my CARICOM counterparts throughout the region, all of them are having serious problems with prostitution, with women being imported into their countries," he said. "In some countries there are Dominicans, South Americans, and even Russians. So it's happening throughout the region."

But on the local front, Burrows admitted that it is often difficult to pinpoint prostitutes or their place of operation.

"It's illegal so its not a publicized thing," he explained. "It's a clandestine thing - something that unless you stumble on it, or unless some conflict happens between the operators and the patrons, we will never hear about it, because they don't advertise that sort of thing.

"Also, ordinarily, if a person was to present themselves to us and they have a valid passport along with sufficient funds to support their stay and a return ticket - they meet the criteria for a visitor. So we have no way of knowing they would have entered The Bahamas for the purpose of prostitution. But then they probably get involved in a prostitution ring."

For this reason, Burrows said a stronger partnership between law enforcement and the public must be forged to weed out the illegal activity.

"The fact of the matter is we don't get assistance from our citizens," said Burrows. "We have to stumble on to these things. That is an ongoing appeal, for us to maintain the security in or country, our citizens must realize they are equal partners as well. So unless they are to come forward and unless they are to be our eyes and ears, nothing is going to be able to solve or prevent these things.

"We have gotten some reports that there are some American girls who would come on Fridays and leave on Sundays," he continued. "We've also gotten reports that the Jamaican girls come and stay for longer periods. So unless we have the intelligence to confirm that these are the individuals in front of us, there is no way for us to prevent their entrance into the country, since they qualify as visitors."

Leading psychiatrist Dr. David Allen has weighed in on the issue. He called prostitution an addiction and an archaic profession that has ensnared both men and women.

"We cannot divorce the treatment of prostitution. We must start from dealing with men - the ones that fosters or organizes the prostitutes," said Dr. Allen. "What they do now is prey on the poor women. Women are having hard times around the world. There is poverty, depression, [and] abuse. So when we focus on women I get very angry about that, because there has to be a holistic approach."]]> Wed, 18 Jun 2008 08:49:00 EDT http://zephyr.tigblog.org/post/391545 25.0833333 -77.35 25.0833333 -77.35 http://zephyr.tigblog.org/post/390587 By Candia Dames -
Nassau, Bahamas:



More and more Bahamians are buckling under the weight of the rising cost of living and slipping below the poverty line in The Bahamas, a senior government official has confirmed.

The worrying situation comes amid ongoing concerns about food and fuel prices, which continue to climb.

Minister of State for Social Development Loretta Butler Turner told the Bahama Journal that her ministry has updated the 2001 Bahamas Living Conditions Survey, which showed that an estimated 27,000 people or 9.3 percent of the country’s population represent the face of Bahamian poverty.

The 2001 report determined that the minimum amount of money needed to purchase adequate low-cost meals with allowances for non-food needs was estimated at $7.84 per person.

This translates into an annual poverty line of $2,863 per person.

Mrs. Butler Turner said more people are slipping below this line, which is why the government increased its allocation for the poor in the 2008/2009 budget.

"We do believe that we are seeing a rise," she said, but quickly added, "The Bahamas is very fortunate. When you talk about poverty, we’re a country that does not have abject poverty – like Haiti, for example – and so to really lift our people out of the grasp of not being able to have a decent meal, not being able to have shelter and so forth, we imagine that just over $3,000 per annum is able to lift that individual."

Mrs. Butler Turner said the Bahamas is "very, very fortunate" that it does not have any significant number of citizens who suffer from malnutrition.

She explained that the Department of Social Services has offices in every island and employees at those offices document when people come in to access services.

"And so we have records of all individuals that come and get services from the Department and we’re able to computerize all of these records and check the data, and so we have seen an increase in the numbers that have been approaching," Mrs. Butler Turner told the Bahama Journal.

She noted that the government’s food assistance starts at $50 per individual per month.

Mrs. Butler said, "Fifty dollars does not buy a lot.

"We know that with the rising cost of food that certainly we had to increase that."

As of July 1, the government plans to raise this assistance to $80 per month.

"We will be going as high as, I think, $320 in assistance to individuals and their families," Mrs. Butler Turner said.

That kind of assistance would be welcomed news – although it is only a drop in the bucket to support a family, according to some Bahamians who are finding it more difficult to make ends meet.

Karen Bowe, a single mother who has five children, said she’s doing the best she can, but is currently unemployed.

"It’s very difficult, especially at the level of the poverty line that we’re in," Ms. Bowe said. "Groceries are expensive, the price of gas is expensive and ‘baby daddies’ are not doing what they are supposed to do."

She said her five children are for three different men. The eldest child is 18 and the youngest is a year old, said Ms. Bowe, who told the Journal she is also finding that baby food is more expensive these days.

"Because I have five kids the luxury of getting certain baby foods, I don’t do," she said.

Ms. Bowe said she was a beautician and is currently looking for a job.

She said she has cut out purchasing fast food for her children because she is finding that even that is too expensive.

Renaldo Ferguson, a young man who lives in an Over-the-Hill community, also claimed that he cannot find a job.

On a recent afternoon, he and a group of young men were roaming the streets when they stopped to talk to the Bahama Journal.

"I don’t want to go back to jail and I don’t want to rob, so what I do is just pray to the Lord that the Lord finds me some work," Mr. Ferguson said.

He claimed the government needs to do more to provide jobs.

The young man told the Journal he can do construction work and often goes to job sites, but is told that no one is hiring.

"Things right now are very tough," Mr. Ferguson said, "tough and rough."

Anita Forbes, a single mother of six who does maid work for different people, said supporting her family is very challenging as well.

"The prices of things are getting higher and higher; your wage isn’t going up. The minimum wage is very, very low and gas prices continue to rise. I have children in school and it’s very, very expensive paying the bills," she said.

However, Ms. Forbes said she has more jobs now than ever before and noted that three of her children are able to support themselves.

She said she earns $30 to $40 on jobs, and she makes sure that money stretches.

But she said, "Everybody’s always crying, but instead of crying you just try to make it one day at a time. You try to work with what you have and save. The pay is very small, but if you could save like $5 a week eventually you would get there. A lot of people complain too much. We need to sit down, plan and organize."

Ms. Forbes lives in Peardale, off Wulff Road, in a small rented home with several other rental units in a dirt beaten, trash-filled yard.

She pointed out that it is rodent infested, so she is trying to make a better way for herself and her children and hopes to be in a better environment by August.

Her 18-year-old daughter has a seven-month-old son and she is not working.

June 16, 2008]]> Mon, 16 Jun 2008 23:02:00 EDT http://zephyr.tigblog.org/post/390587 25.0833333 -77.35 25.0833333 -77.35 http://zephyr.tigblog.org/post/389779 • From 1959, the heroic guerrilla became one of the central leaders of the revolutionary process as a result of his proven determination, versatility and abilities and because of the dynamic of the tremendous events resulting from the aggression against Cuba • Héctor Rodríguez Lompart recalls Fidel Castro’s strategy for combating the blockade that is now more than 45 years old, and the role played by Che, who would have been 80 years old on June 14

BY GABRIEL MOLINA:

• THE Cuban Revolution has always been forced to defend itself from the hostility of the U.S. government, as far back as the days of the Sierra Maestra.

As early as March of ’59, just three months after the triumph of the armed struggle, then-Vice President Richard Nixon left a meeting he had held with Fidel in Washington and convinced President Eisenhower that action had to be taken to overthrow him.

That same year, the United States persuaded the British government to cancel a sale of Hunter fighter planes to Cuba. In the opinion of the U.S. authorities, those aircraft would have posed a problem for the invasion it was preparing, and which was carried out in April 1961 in the Bay of Pigs. With the same goal, the French ship La Coubre was blown up in February 1960 as munitions were being unloaded on Havana’s docks. Dozens of Cubans and French citizens were killed in that terrorist act, attributed in Cuba to the CIA. Simultaneously, Washington prevented a consortium of Western European banks from approving a loan to Cuba of $100 million.

Sometimes the revolutionary government adopted the tactic of retaliating to economic blows. On June 6, when the Standard Oil, Texaco and Royal Dutch Shell oil companies refused, under U.S. government orders, to refine oil that Cuba had bought from the Soviet Union, the Cuban government did not hesitate to take over the refineries less than one month later. The sparring continued with the boycott that the Eisenhower administration promoted among oil exporters and shipping companies.

Cuba responded by nationalizing its refineries on August 6.

Che Guevara participated in all of those events and the corresponding decisions, not just as a combatant and politician, but as an economist, or better said, a strategist of the economy together with Fidel, a function for which he is not so well known.

Beginning with Che’s first official civilian responsibility as director of industries for the Institute of Agrarian Reform, and also as president of the National Bank as of November of ’60, and minister of industries as of 1962, it was his duty to act principally in the economy, to implement the line of diversification that the Revolution had charted both in production and international trade. An exceptional witness to the trajectory of Commander Guevara is Hector Rodríguez Llompart, who met Che in the La Cabaña fortress — where Commander Guevara was the military chief — in early 1959. Llompart was the municipal commissioner of Regla, and visited him together with Captain Miguel Angel Duque de Estrada, who was in charge of the Revolutionary Courts. Here are some of his valuable memories and assessments.

How do you remember those first days of the aggression?

--Aggressions of all types by the U.S. government against Cuba began very early on.

The armed aggression against the island’s production centers, terrorist attacks and armed threats were answered by the Revolution by the improved organization of its military and security apparatuses, acquiring weapons, and creating the National Revolutionary Militias, Committees for Defense of the Revolution, etc.

The support and determination of our people to fight for victory under the slogan of ‘Homeland or Death’ made the political trenches impregnable.

The plans for economic aggression were more surreptitious, but just as dangerous

How did Che participate in the fight against those plans?

—The almost total dependence on the U.S. market and our economic ties of 50-plus years with the former colonial power made the situation of our open economy even more complicated.

It was essential to find other markets for the sale of our products, as well as for imported goods.

In late 1959, a Soviet exposition was set to take place in Mexico, and the Soviet delegation was being led by then-Deputy Prime Minister Anastas Mikoyan.

At that time, I was an official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and it was precisely Commander Guevara who told me that I should go to Mexico to officially invite Mikoyan to bring the Soviet exposition to Havana, and for him to personally lead, if possible, the Soviet mission.

As one personal anecdote, I remember how the newspapers announced Che’s visit; the day I arrived in Mexico, there were many reporters and photographers at the airport. The newspaper El Universal reported the news that day under the headline: "They were expecting a bearded one, and a smooth-cheeked one arrived."

After a number of setbacks related to an ecclesiastical congress that was taking place in Cuba at the time, the visit was proposed, and finally happened in February 1960.

The Cuban delegation led by Commander Guevara and the Soviet one held a number of talks about the need to place our sugar sales in the USSR [market], in the face of the imminent suspension of purchases by the United States.

A trade agreement and another on credit were finally signed on February 13, 1960 by the Commander-in-Chief [Fidel Castro] and Anastas Mikoyan.

At that time, the USSR promised to buy 5 million tons of Cuban unrefined sugar over five years, and granted us a credit of $100 million, to be repaid over 12 years with 2.5% interest.

At the UN Conference on Trade and Development on March 25, 1964, speaking in the name of our government, Commander Guevara summed up that first period as follows: "Subsequently, this aggression was characterized by measures aimed at paralyzing the Cuban economy. The idea was to deprive Cuba, in mid-1960, of the fuel it needed for the operation of its industries, transportation and electric power plants. Under pressure from the State Department, independent U.S. oil companies refused to sell oil to Cuba or to make their tanker ships available for its transport. Shortly afterward, an attempt was made to deprive the island of the necessary hard currency for foreign trade. On July 6, 1960, then-President Eisenhower cut Cuba’s sugar quota to the United States to 700,000 tons, totally eliminating that quota on March 31, 1961, a few days after the announced Alliance for Progress and days before the Bay of Pigs invasion. There was an attempt to shut down Cuba’s industry, by depriving it of raw materials and spare parts for its machines and, to that end, on October 19, 1960, the U.S. Department of Commerce issued a resolution prohibiting the shipment of numerous products to our island. That ban on trade with Cuba became greater, until on February 3, 1962, then-President Kennedy declared a complete embargo on U.S. trade with Cuba."

Having failed in all of its aggression, the United States moved to implement an economic blockade against our country, aimed at preventing other countries from trading with us. First of all, on January 24, 1962, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that it was prohibiting entry into the United States of any product made, wholly or in part, with Cuban products, even if they were manufactured in another country. In another step signifying the establishment of a virtual economic blockade, on February 6, 1963, the White House issued a press release announcing that merchandise bought with U.S. government money would not be loaded on to ships with foreign flags that had engaged in trade with Cuba after January 1st of that year. That was how the blacklist began, which is now applied to more than 150 ships from countries who did not bow down to the illegal U.S. blockade. And in another step, to hinder trade with Cuba, on July 8, 1963, the U.S. Treasury Department froze all Cuban assets in U.S. territory and prohibited all transfers of money to and from Cuba, as well as any other transaction in dollars via third countries.

What were the objectives of that tour?

—The decision to deprive us of fuel, suspend purchases of Cuban sugar and other economic aggression had already materialized by October 1960, when, as deputy secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I received a telephone call from Jaime Barrios, who worked with Che, informing me that in the coming days I should join a delegation that would be led by Che and would visit all of the socialist countries. At that time, Che was already talking to us quite a lot about the need to build relations with those countries.

Later, I would learn more details about our mission; the primary objective of diversifying our trade by placing most of our sugar production in those markets and replacing the majority of our imports with products from those places.

Once in the USSR, an emergency meeting took place in Moscow that included almost all of the foreign ministers of the socialist countries. In the meeting, Commander Guevara explained the serious situation facing the Cuban Revolution given the imperialist aggression, and as the main theme, the need to place four million tons of sugar in those markets, at a price of four cents per pound. This price was higher than the rate on the New York Stock Exchange at the time.

He also said it was necessary for Cuba to buy its essential products from those countries.

You should remember that at the time, Cuba did not yet have a Ministry of Foreign Trade, and we had very little information, and even less experience, in that area. All we had were solid political arguments and a letter signed by our prime minister, Commander Fidel Castro, which had the abovementioned request, and its bearer was Commander Guevara.

What were the agreements reached?

—As a result of those negotiations, the USSR promised to buy 2.7 million tons of sugar; China, one million tons; and the other socialist countries, 300,000 tons.

In addition, Korea, Vietnam and Mongolia bought symbolic quantities as an expression of support and solidarity with the socialist countries.

In Moscow, a multilateral agreement on payments was also signed.

With the goal of reaching trade agreements that included lists of the products to be bought and sold, payment agreements and credit agreements, the delegation led by Che also visited Czechoslovakia, China, Korea and the Federal Republic of Germany.

During his stay in China, and to save time, Che decided that he would visit the Democratic Republic of Korea, and had me lead a small group to Vietnam and Mongolia, countries with which we also established diplomatic relations at the time.

At the end of his stay in Berlin, Che had to return to Cuba, informing us that he would make a short stop in Budapest and that the delegation I was leading from then on should travel to Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania.

Was there already talk of the need to change Cuba’s trade structure?

—After arriving in Cuba, Commander Guevara appeared on television on January 6, 1961, to report on the signing of the agreements with the socialist countries:

"It was an extremely difficult task, a difficult task, because we have had to change the structure of our trade in just a few months. From the end of 1959, exactly one year ago, Cuba has passed from being a country with a totally colonial structure, with domestic and foreign trade systems completely dominated by the large import companies dependent on monopoly capital, to being — in 10 months, as of October, when the cycle definitively ends — a country where the state holds a complete monopoly over foreign trade, and also a large part of domestic trade."

He also referred to additional difficulties that we were facing, given that in those countries, the decimal metric system was used, while we continued to use the colonial practice of weighing in pounds and measuring in yards, with different systems for measuring pressure or a simple pipe fitting.

Electrical equipment in Cuba uses 60 cycles, while in the socialist countries, it was 50 cycles per second.

In short, we were facing all types of difficulties, but with the determination to overcome them and triumph over them in face of the dilemma created for us by the imperialist aggression.

Interesting anecdotes emerged out of these initial experiences.

For example, in China, when evaluating the list of products to be traded, there was a difference of $3 million favoring the Chinese side.

Before signing the final protocol, the Chinese prime minister at the time, Chou En-lai, told Che that China should not appear to be receiving more in products than what it was exporting to Cuba.

So it was decided to have a line of $3 million in arts and crafts exports, given that at the time, we could not find any other products that met our needs.

It was out of that protocol contingent of Chinese arts and crafts that lots of stories circulated in Havana about the large volume of Chinese walking sticks and umbrellas being sold in our stores.

Actually, the Chinese sent us valuable craftwork that I am sure exceeded the value previously mentioned.

I always believed that neither they nor we really valued those wonderful things.

On the contrary, certain foreigners who were living in Cuba temporarily did take advantage of the situation, enriching themselves through the illegal sale of those art treasures.

Another source of anecdotes and jokes was the snow removers. I think that these actually had a basis in truth, in machines that were the same or similar and were purchased to be tried out in our mining industry.

I will never forget the look of amazement on the face of the Soviet translator who, in reading the list of things we needed, did not know what to say when a typing error led him to read the need for thousands of "monkey lips" (bembas de mono) instead of "hand pumps" (bombas de mano).

We joked amongst ourselves about the decision by Commander Guevara to buy all the canned meat we could, and also all the machine tools that we could.

A few months later, we would realize how correct those decisions were, when, mobilized to occupy trenches or as a volunteer in cutting sugar cane, I thought the Russian meat tasted glorious, after having made so many faces when we first tried the samples they had given us.

We had the same internal satisfaction of knowing that the problem created by the blockade of a shortage of spare parts could be solved through the machine tools we had bought, which a comrade on the delegation had commented on by going so far as to say that on the next King’s Day, we would have to do propaganda among the country’s parents so they would give each child the present of a machine tool.

Personally, I have unforgettable memories of those days together with a man as peerless as Che.

I had the opportunity to meet prominent individuals like Mao Zedong and Chou En-lai, Nikita Krushchev, Walter Ulbricht, Pham Van Dong and other outstanding leaders of the socialist camp.

But it is with special affection and admiration that I remember one agreeable and helpful young woman who helped us as a German translator in the FRG, Tamara Bunke Bider, who years later would go down in history as Tania the guerrilla fighter.

On February 23, 1961, the Ministry of Foreign Trade was created, with Alberto Mora appointed as its minister.

What problems were created by those changes in foreign trade, and what role in did Commander Guevara play in resolving them?

— Some time after returning from the trip to the socialist countries, I was appointed deputy minister of foreign trade.

During those early years of organizing and readapting our foreign trade, and despite having multiple responsibilities, Commander Guevara played an exceptional role in attending to and developing it.

During those years, Che referred publicly to foreign trade activity, sometimes to refute those who, like the [newspaper] Diario de la Marina, maliciously criticized the first agreements with the Soviet Union. He did that during a talk he gave at the University of Havana on March 2, 1960, and days later, on March 20, 1960, as part of the inaugural lecture of the TV program "The People’s University."

He also referred to the main difficulties we were facing at the time in taking on these tasks, such as during the speech he gave at a planning seminar in Algeria on July 13, 1963, where he said:

"Our foreign trade had changed completely in location. From 75% with the United States, it went to 75-80% with the socialist countries. A beneficial change for us in every respect, political and social, but in the economic respect, it required a large amount of organization.

Hundreds of specialized importers used to make their requests to the United States by telephone, and the next day they would arrive by ferry, direct from Miami to Havana. There were no warehouses or foresight of any kind.

That whole apparatus, without those technicians, enemies of the government, had to be established in what was first the Foreign Trade Bank of Cuba and later the Ministry of Foreign Trade, and centralize all of these purchases there with inexperienced people, to do them now, not one day away by telephone, but two months away, in long talks. And at the same time, raw materials that had a different name. And even more: if you all go today to a factory in this country and want to know what kind of steel is used for a given spare part, you will find that it has a number in a catalog, the SKF-27, for example. The SKF-27 in that company’s sales catalog corresponds to a particular component; how could that be requested in the socialist countries? We had to do analyses of steel, sometimes machine fabricate one or two particular parts. Almost impossible. We had to import the machines here in Cuba, with a shortage of highly-qualified technicians."

Those were Cuba’s everyday problems — and still are.

Was he pleased with the course of those trade relations?

— Che foresaw and warned of the difficulties and obstacles that, in our own experience of trade relations with certain socialist countries, led to the latter following capitalist patterns in the conduct of their relations with underdeveloped countries.

So, in a speech he gave in Algiers on February 24, 1965, at the second Afro-Asian Economic Solidarity Seminar, he said:

"Socialism cannot exist unless there is a change in people’s consciousness, creating a new, fraternal attitude toward humanity, both individually, within the society in which socialism is being or has been built, and in relation to the world, with respect to all of the nations that suffer imperialist oppression." •

1. Jaime Barrios, a Chilean, was killed on September 11, 1973 at La Moneda Palace.]]> Sun, 15 Jun 2008 20:27:00 EDT http://zephyr.tigblog.org/post/389779 25.0833333 -77.35 25.0833333 -77.35 http://zephyr.tigblog.org/post/389227 By SHAVAUGHN MOSS, Lifestyles Editor -
Nassau, Bahamas:




The recent abrupt change in leadership, and the silence of the Bahamas Christian Council (BCC) on major social issues facing the nation is cause for grave concern to its effectiveness, according to Reverend J. Emmette Weir, serving pastor at Our Saviour Lutheran Church, East Sunrise Highway, Freeport, Grand Bahama.

"The Christian council has done, or rather, is doing very little in the way of providing moral and spiritual initiatives for the uplifting of the people of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas," says Weir, a former BCC president.

"What are the reasons for the deafening silence of the council on the major and most serious moral, social and spiritual issues now?" he asked. According to Weir, the BCC is the major ecclesiastical body in our young nation, charged with the sacred responsibility to safeguard the moral and spiritual moorings of the community.

Sudden change in leadership

According to Weir, the election of Bishop John Humes as council president last year was greeted with enthusiasm by Christians in all walks of life. He said his youthful, enthusiastic approach, and spiritual and administrative leadership of the Church of God, appeared to be just what the council needed to carry out its mission more effectively. "Outspoken and charismatic, the bishop did not hesitate to speak out on the moral and spiritual issues facing the nation. Concisely, the council, which at times in the past was rather dormant, took on a new, more aggressive role in society under the leadership of this bold clergyman. Not content to dwell in the capital, he traveled throughout the length and breadth of the archipelago as he sought to strengthen the branches of the council in the Family Islands. Yet — after just one year in office — he was not re-elected.

Weir said with the rising tide of crime and violence, the escalating cost of living and the unacceptable standard of behavior of some members of Parliament, Bahamians should be wondering why the BCC's leadership isn't addressing these issues.

"Day-by-day we are alarmed at reports of robbery with violence, rape (in which our nation has the reputation of being amongst the highest rate in the world), attempted murder, drug smuggling and murder. How utterly distressing it is to witness the number of our young men who are being killed as a result of acts of violence. What is even more disturbing is the fact that our judicial system is very slow in dealing with these matters," says Weir.

"Bishop Simeon Hall has spoken out concerning these matters, but, from the BCC at this time when we are so worried about the high rate of crime, we have heard not a word! Ironically, we have heard more about the need to deal with crime from the president of the Bahamas Chamber of Commerce, the courageous Dionioso D'Aguilar, than from the president of the Christian Council."

Weir also said that with the high cost of living, increased cost of gasoline and diesel oil and food, many people are experiencing hardship.

"Not only has very little been said by the officers of the council on this matter," said Weir, "one would have thought that the council would take the lead in encouraging the churches in The Bahamas to use their resources to help those in need. Should not the council lead the way in calling upon congregations to do more for the people in the name of Christ by operating soup kitchens, providing food and shelter for the needy, etc? Concisely, neither by word nor deed is the council taking the initiative in helping people to cope with the rising cost of living."

Weir further said that many people have expressed concern at the standard to which some of our members of Parliament have descended during some debates, with the repeating of innuendoes "delving into the personal lives of MPs." He emphasized that while this is tolerable in the "scandal" pages of the media, this is below the dignity of debate in the halls of Parliament.

"So disturbing has this matter become that several former members of Parliament have lamented the same in public. And Bishop Hall has gone so far as to suggest that the Parliamentary Channel "be taken off the air. But again, from the council, not a word," Weir said.

"This is most disappointing because, normally speaking, it would be expected that the leadership of the council would have enough 'clout' to speak, with authority to politicians on both sides of the political divide, calling them to demonstrate a higher standard in their debates. It's hard for me to understand why the council has elected to remain silent on the three major social issues facing this nation," said Weir.

"The reticence of the BCC as this nation approaches the celebration of the 35th anniversary of independence stands out in stark contrast to the courageous and influential stance of its leaders in the years leading up to its attainment of independence back in '73. Then there were courageous, outspoken leaders such as H.W. Brown, Reuben E. Cooper (both Baptists), Rev. Edwin Taylor (Methodist) and Archdeacon William Thompson (Anglican) and Fr. Joseph Perna (Catholic), who exercised tremendous amount of influence in society," Weir noted.

"But we cannot afford to 'bask' in the glories of the past," says Weir. "The crucial question is 'What can be done to enable the Christian Council to fulfill its mission in the world today'."

Weir says the revision of the council's constitution and the widening of its composition are essential if the council is to be transformed.

Need for the BCC constitution's revision

"As Rev. Myles Munroe has pointed out in many of his works, leadership in the church is of crucial importance. In this regard, the present system of annual elections for all persons in office requires careful review. After all, it takes about three years for a person to be established in leadership," said Weir.

He said the present system of annual elections should se changed to allow the president to serve for a longer period.

"The first year is usually one in which the leader is 'feeling his/her way', getting to know the job. In the second and third years, he/she can be expected to take bold initiatives in leadership in every respect — in speaking on moral and spiritual issues and dealing with the day-to-day administration of the church. It does not make for effective leadership if the leader has to be ever-thinking about the next election because he may be voted out at the end of the year," according to Weir.

He says the BCC should take a leaf out of the book of the Grand Bahama Christian Council, which elects a president for three years.

Including the whole church

"There can be no doubt that one reason for the relative ineffectiveness of the Christian Council is its very limited scope of the membership of the church on these islands. At the time of independence virtually the whole Christian community was involved in its work and witness of the council. There were the traditional main line denominations as well as the younger "more charismatic' churches, uniting together a powerful body of Christians," Weir observed.

Weir says he can recall attending meetings of the council when the Anglican Church was represented by the late Archdeacon William Thompson. Moreover, he recalls that the Roman Catholic Church went so far as to release Fr. Joseph Perna to serve as secretary of the council on virtually a full-time basis.

"The whole Bahamian church was involved in the council at the time of Independence. Today, 35 years later, despite major advances on the international ecumenical scene, the council is very restricted in its membership, thus, the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches, two of the major denominations with long historic roots in The Bahamas, are outside the council and the Methodists and Presbyterians play a minor role — leaving the younger churches to dominate the council. This cannot be good for the church," says Weir.

"Indeed, in light of the advance of non-Christian religions such as Islam and Christian deviations such as Rastafarianism, especially amongst young black males, it is essential that Christians unite. It is submitted, therefore, that all the major denominations participate in the life and witness of the Bahamas Christian Council (as was the case at independence)."

According to Weir, all is not lost, and if the BCC reconstituted and restructured to include all major denominations, the council may again play a major role in the promotion of the social, mental, moral and spiritual uplifting of all the people of the country.]]> Sat, 14 Jun 2008 21:06:00 EDT http://zephyr.tigblog.org/post/389227 25.0833333 -77.35 25.0833333 -77.35 http://zephyr.tigblog.org/post/388541 By KRYSTEL ROLLE, Guardian Staff Reporter -
Nassau, Bahamas:



The government intends to introduce a universal catastrophic health insurance scheme, Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham announced yesterday in the House of Assembly.

The scheme will benefit all Bahamians who are inflicted with a serious illness and require major surgery or medical attention.

"You should have national insurance coverage in The Bahamas with no exemptions for all persons -- fat people, skinny people, sick people, well people, those with diabetes and those with high blood pressure, etc., whoever they are, to be able to ensure that if there is a catastrophic illness, you can have medical care taken care of by a national insurance scheme," said the PM.

While he did not give a time frame when the initiative would be brought into force, Ingraham said the government will begin to work on it as soon as they implement the National Drug Fund.

Last week, Health Minister Hubert Minnis announced that efforts are "well underway" to establish the fund.

The plan is expected to become fully operational within the upcoming budget year.

Last night, the prime minister said the prescription drug benefit will address the needs of all Bahamian people.

"So the pers