An Important Day in my Life

Actually, the day I am marking as "important" is yesterday, and for two reasons: The first reason is that I managed to upload Uncle Neal's trio concert onto YouTube (actually a friend helped me do it, but he misspelled Uncle Neal's name). The second reason remains unmentioned...

The US Corporate State

On this Three Kings Day, a time when we step back, take stock of things and try to gain insights into the future, I'm afraid Chris Hedges summarizes the status quo succinctly, as well as points to where the US is headed.

Celebrating My Birthday

I can't think of a better way to commemorate my birthday.

"Nothing has been more moving to me than this desire, realized imperfectly but repeatedly, to connect across differences, to be a community, to make a better world, to embrace each other. This desire is what lies behind those messy camps, those raucous demonstrations, those cardboard signs and long conversations. Young activists have spoken to me about the extraordinary richness of their experiences at Occupy, and they call it love." Rebecca Solnit

Miss Angola Leila Lopes crowned Miss Universe

Congratulations to Leila Lopes! There is more to her story, however, which you will likely not find in the pages of the western press. It needs to be told: The source is in SPANISH, and I have translated it:

Of parents from Cienfuegos, Cuba, and born in Angola, the new Miss Universe, Leila Lopes, has been the victim of vicious racist verbal attacks.

The messages, written in Portuguese and English, were reported by the Stormfront webpage, whose authors define themselves as a "white nationalist community", that is under investigation by the Brazilian Federal Police on suspicion of links with neo-Nazi groups.

Even before learning of the abuse, Leila Lopes had said in a press conference at dawn on Tuesday, to not feel affected by racism.

"Racism does not affect me. The racists are the ones that need help, because it is not normal for a person to [harbor such ideas]... in the XXI century. There is no basis for any kind of prejudice," said the beautiful young 25 year old.

The organizers of the competition held Monday evening in Sao Paulo gave no immediate comment on the racist attacks by members of Stormfront, who also questioned the "racial purity" of European candidates for the title.

Beautifully said, Leila. Short, sweet and to the point! Bravo!

The Legacy of 9-11 on its Tenth Anniversary

I agree wholeheartedly with Tom Engelhardt:

Let's just can it...
Ask yourself this: ten years into the post-9/11 era, haven't we had enough of ourselves? If we have any respect for history or humanity or decency left, isn’t it time to rip the Band-Aid off the wound, to remove 9/11 from our collective consciousness? No more invocations of those attacks to explain otherwise inexplicable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and our oh-so-global war on terror. No more invocations of 9/11 to keep the Pentagon and the national security state flooded with money. No more invocations of 9/11 to justify every encroachment on liberty, every new step in the surveillance of Americans, every advance in pat-downs and wand-downs and strip downs that keeps fear high and the homeland security state afloat.

I have expressed myself already on the handling of the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9-11, so there is no need to revisit that. If we must remember something on this day, it should be the following:

It's hardly controversial to suggest that the mainstream media's performance in the lead-up to the Iraq War was a disaster. In retrospect, many journalists and pundits wish they had been more skeptical of the White House's claims about Iraq, particularly its allegations about weapons of mass destruction. At the same time, though, media apologists suggest that the press could not have done much better, since "everyone" was in agreement on the intelligence regarding Iraq's weapons threat. This was never the case. Critical journalists and analysts raised serious questions at the time about what the White House was saying. Often, however, their warnings were ignored by the bulk of the corporate press.

This timeline is an attempt to recall some of the worst moments in journalism, from the fall of 2002 and into the early weeks of the Iraq War. It is not an exhaustive catalog, but a useful reference point for understanding the media's performance. The timeline also points to missed opportunities, when courageous journalists—working inside the mainstream and the alternative media—uncovered stories that should have made the front pages of daily newspapers, or provided fodder for TV talk shows. By reading mainstream media critically and tuning into the alternative press, citizens can see that the notion that "everyone" was wrong about Iraq was—and is—just another deception.

Hypocrisy

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Earl Neal Creque

The final months of the year 2000 were devastating for the West Indian side my family. In October, I lost my mother while in December I lost the last two of my uncles on my mother's side of the family: Marvin and Neal. Uncle Neal passed away around December 1 and it is him I want to remember with this post.

My uncle was born Earl Neal Creque on April 13, 1940, in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, the last of eight children born to my grandfather (Cyril Creque) and grandmother (Leonie Sewer). He began taking piano lessons at age five and from around nine to sixteen years of age he studied classical piano with Edris Stakemann. Since a biographical sketch of Neal can be accessed on-line, I will not reproduce what is already available. I just want to add that my Uncle Neal was a prolific composer, having reportedly composed over 3,000 compositions (not all of them Jazz), and a teacher, having been on the faculty of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and Cleveland State University. Although he didn't leave an extensive legacy of commercial recordings, his compositions have been widely appreciated (and recorded) by top-caliber musicians that knew him, from Mongo Santamaria to Ramsey Lewis, among many others.

What I want to do is commit to writing some scattered memories of my own and combine them with an interview my Uncle Neal granted to the Cleveland Plain Dealer late in his career. First, a bit of personal background is in order. I have a vivid recollection of my Uncle Marvin and Aunt Marilyn's household (whose entire family I grew up with, you could say, since I visited them with regularity from my early childhood days). The house was filled with music (both live and recorded Jazz Music*), given that instruments were always available, which fellow musician friends of my uncle would stop by to play at any hour of the day or night. My Uncle Marvin had learned piano and could belt out a tune from memory although he never pursued a career in music. In fact, the Marvin Creque household had garnered a reputation throughout Charlotte Amalie as a sort of impromptu Jazz studio. Those were joyous days for me and, while I did not recognize it at the moment, they would have a profound impact on me later in life. Hence from my early days, I came to "absorb" Jazz (by osmosis, if you will) and associate it with my Uncle Marvin, though I was only able to fully appreciate the genre later in life.

Although all my mother's siblings were musically trained at some points in their lives, the only one (other than herself) to have made a career out of music was my Uncle Neal. While I had met Uncle Neal during my childhood, it wasn't until I went to Oberlin College (from 1977 to 1981) that I got to know and appreciate his talent as a Jazz musician. It was also during that period that I was finally able to fully appreciate the genre of Jazz, to the extent that I consider it my first love above all other musical genres. Uncle Neal, at the time, was firmly established in nearby Cleveland and I (of course) took advantage of the proximity to visit him on occasion.

It was at my insistence (I believe), that Uncle Neal came to Oberlin for the first time. During my student days, there was a cultural activity of sorts being organized by the Black Students Association on campus for which students were asked to suggest artists. I jumped at the idea of having Uncle Neal play since by then I had come to love his music and, with him being in the vicinity, it wouldn't cost much to bring him. He brought a trio and wowed the students, but it wasn't until after I graduated that I learned that he had returned to Oberlin and eventually gotten a faculty appointment at the Jazz studies Department of the famed Oberlin Conservatory. I was so proud for him and for many years thought I had somehow managed to facilitate that job opportunity by inviting him to Oberlin during my student years. Ironically, I had bragged for many a year that my crowning achievement in Oberlin wasn't the fact that I obtained my bachelor's degree, but that I had unsuspectingly hooked Uncle Neal up with the prestigious conservatory of music!). I learned, shortly before his death that it was actually the Director Wendell Logan of the Oberlin Jazz Studies Department that had witnessed Neal (on another occasion) and beckoned him to (eventually) come to Oberlin.

Regardless of how he arrived at Oberlin, we were all so happy for him because it got him off the Jazz clubbing circuit. It is truly heartbreaking to witness the tragic history of many of Jazz's finest musicians and composers, who unable to make much money, are forced to constantly be on the road seeking gigs at (often seedy) night clubs, a lifestyle that leads to early burn-out in their careers and often to an early death. While most musicians don't have it good, the Jazz musician's lot in particular is terrible (although it has changed for the better in recent years). Hence, the steady job afforded Uncle Neal the opportunity to give loose reign to his creative powers without the economic knife at his throat. He also relished the opportunity to teach and was able to go back to one of his great loves - classical composition.

Uncle Neal expressed his outlook in an interview with the Cleveland Plain Dealer - He devotes more and more time to teaching at Oberlin College and Cleveland State University and writing classical music. What he tries to convey in his music, Creque says, "is the hope that the kids coming up in music respect the educational system that is afforded them today. A lot of things that are available to them, if they had been present years ago, no telling how far Jazz might have advanced. You can be studying at Oberlin and the talent can come in from all over the country to perform," he says. (…) As for the clubs, Creque doesn't miss them. "I think my interests have grown in a different direction", he says. "My original love was classical music and I'm back to that. Between performing and composing classical works and teaching, you get a chance to see an extension of yourself in terms of the student. When you see what you have accomplished, and pass some of that on, it's a marvelous thing."

Footnote and a requiem: My Uncle Marvin, more than any of us, loved Uncle Neal, perhaps because he saw in him the realization of what he had always wanted to do. We used to anguish over Uncle Neal's aversion to the recording studio. Despite being a prolific composer, Uncle Neal only left a handful of commercial recordings and most of these were made early in his career (which is one reason he is not well known on the Jazz circuit).

Neal did keep us readily supplied, however, with tape recordings of his concerts as well as some studio quality recordings. This would sometimes frustrate us even more because we (especially Uncle Marvin) would listen to these fantastic recordings and lament that they were not available on the commercial market (thus garnering him wider recognition). In an effort at garnering him wider recognition, I once even contacted the host Marian MacPartland of the popular radio program Piano Jazz to try to get him on the show, only to be told (after I mailed up a selection of his recordings) that a prerequisite for being invited to the show was that the artist have made a recent commercial recording. Shortly thereafter, we all learned that Uncle Neal had contracted cancer and I was (we all were) devastated.

I make no joke when I say that Uncle Neal is my favorite musician. I would say so even if he were no relative of mine. The fact that he was related to me was a source of immense pride and joy beyond description. I cherish the tapes and videos he diligently sent us over the years and preserve the copies of the classical pieces he composed late in his career, copies of which he had sent my mother. As a tribute, view the YouTube of Uncle Neal and Howie Smith playing Neal's composition "Slightly Monkish". I have a particular love for this piece because, aside from being a tribute to the all-time great Jazz icon (and favorite of mine!) Thelonious Monk, it has the calypso rhythm of our West Indian heritage in the Virgin Islands. God Bless You Uncle Neal.

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Here Comes your Non-Violent Resistance

A defining moment for all parties involved:

"FOR many years now, we've heard American commentators bemoan the violence of the Palestinian national movement. If only Palestinians had learned the lessons of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, we hear, they'd have had their state long ago. Surely no Israeli government would have violently suppressed a non-violent Palestinian movement of national liberation seeking only the universally recognised right of self-determination...So now we have an opportunity to see how Americans will react. We've asked the Palestinians to lay down their arms. We've told them their lack of a state is their own fault; if only they would embrace non-violence, a reasonable and unprejudiced world would see the merit of their claims. Over the weekend, tens of thousands of them did just that, and it seems likely to continue. If crowds of tens of thousands of non-violent Palestinian protesters continue to march, and if Israel continues to shoot at them, what will we do? Will we make good on our rhetoric, and press Israel to give them their state? Or will it turn out that our paeans to non-violence were just cynical tactics in an amoral international power contest staged by militaristic Israeli and American right-wing groups whose elective affinities lead them to shape a common narrative of the alien Arab/Muslim threat? Will we even bother to acknowledge that the Palestinians are protesting non-violently? Or will we soldier on with the same empty decades-old rhetoric, now drained of any truth or meaning, because it protects established relationships of power? What will it take to make Americans recognise that the real Martin Luther King-style non-violent Palestinian protesters have arrived, and that Israeli soldiers are shooting them with real bullets?"

Fukushima Nuclear Disaster- You won't hear this on the Main Stream News.

Obama Is Helping Iran

Most people I know are having difficulties figuring out what is happening in the Middle East and why. This is understandable, given the Western (and especially US) mainstream media's tendency to hand out the propaganda that Washington wants deployed precisely for domestic consumption. Hence, I feel compelled to highlight the following article by authors Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett. Flynt Leverett, who is about my age, is no light-weight. He:

...is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C. and a professor at the Pennsylvania State University School of International Affairs. From March 2002 to March 2003, he served as the senior director for Middle East affairs on the National Security Council. Prior to serving on the NSC, he was a counterterrorism expert on the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, and before that he served as a CIA senior analyst for eight years. Since leaving government service, Leverett served as a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy before becoming the director of the Geopolitics of Energy Initiative in the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation.

So, if you would like some insight about the Middle East and what is happening and likely to continue happening there, then do yourself a favor and read his article in Foreign Policy. Here are some excerpts:

On Obama's watch, the regional balance of influence and power has shifted even further away from the United States and toward Iran and its allies. The Islamic Republic has continued to deepen its alliances with Syria and Turkey and expand its influence in Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine. Public opinion polls, for example, continue to show that the key leaders in the Middle East's resistance bloc -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Syrian President Bashar Assad, Lebanon's Hassan Nasrallah, Hamas's Khaled Mishaal, and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan -- are all vastly more popular across the region than their counterparts in closely U.S.-aligned and supported regimes in Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, and Saudi Arabia.
(...)
From literally the day after Iran's 2009 presidential election, we pointed out that the Green Movement could not succeed in bringing down the Islamic Republic, for two basic reasons: The movement did not represent anything close to a majority of Iranian society, and a majority of Iranians still support the idea of an Islamic Republic. Two additional factors are in play today, which make it even less likely that those who organized and participated in scattered demonstrations in Iran over the past week will be able to catalyze "regime change" there.
(...)

Go to the original article at Foreign Policy to discover what those "two additional factors" are. For further antidotes to the US mainstream media, I recommend Juan Cole and The Arabist.

An Open Letter from Gaza: Two Years after the Massacre, a Demand for Justice

An Open Letter from Gaza: Two Years after the Massacre, a Demand for Justice

The assault lasted 22 days, killing 1,417 Palestinians, 352 of them children, according to main-stream Human Rights Organizations. For a staggering 528 hours, Israeli Occupation Forces let loose their US-supplied F15s, F16s, Merkava Tanks, internationally prohibited White Phosphorous, and bombed and invaded the small Palestinian coastal enclave that is home to 1.5 million, of whom 800,000 are children and over 80 percent UN registered refugees. Around 5,300 remain permanently wounded.
(...)
We ask: when will the world’s countries act according to the basic premise that people should be treated equally, regardless of their origin, ethnicity or colour – is it so far-fetched that a Palestinian child deserves the same human rights as any other human being? Will you be able to look back and say you stood on the right side of history or will you have sided with the oppressor?

There is a War going on

"Happy" Thanksgiving

Haiti's Academic Community digs out of the Rubble

We share our grief with the rest of the world for the tragic circumstances that have befallen our fellow human beings in Haiti.  As members of the academic community, though, we hold a particular interest in the fate of those that labor in country's institutes for higher learning. In this respect, I would like to share with you an email from Dr. Jacky Lumarque,  Rector at Université Quisqueya.

Rough translation of mail ( by Gilles Lubeth) from Dr Jacky Lumarque,  Rector Université  Quisqueya:

It's my first time on the Internet since Tuesday's earthquake. My apologies to friends who may have been worried by my silence but I have been focused on rescue operations and assistance to families. Iwas bent on not ending rescue operations until getting confirmation that the persons we were searching for had indeed died.

Here's the situation...

I stopped searching for survivors for good and I am finally able to extract those corpses that have been identified: 5 students from the Faculty of Education, including 2 priests from the Salesiens congregation, a monk and a nun from the St Croix congregation, a lecturer, an engineer and two gardeners. We will find out this morning if there are more victims that can be identified.

The corpses are badly decomposed and we had to turn a water tank into a grave, in the botanical garden. This location will become a mausoleum dedicated to the victims of the earthquake. Bishop Dumas, members of the Don Bosco and St Croix congregations will hold a church service in memory of the victims at noon. Those who cannot be present physically will surely keep us in their affectionate thoughts.

Special thanks to students and volunteers (most of whom didn't even finish primary school) for the extroadinary courage displayed, as they work 48 hours non-stop to take about 20 survivors from the rubble, without any technical support and at risk of losing their own lives. Those who died before our eyes did not make it because of the lack of resources and equipment to move them out from under the beams and flagstones where they were crushed.

All the buildings were destroyed, including the Museum which was hosting an exhibition dedicated to the famous Haitian-born painter, Jean-Michel Basquiat, as well as three apartments for visiting lecturers at Quisqueya and the state universities. We will have to start from scratch but I have no doubt about our collective ability to find the means, the energy and the determination to do so.  

For now, mobilization at Quisqueya has been directed to families in need. The Harry Truman Boulevard Campus has been used as a Center already hosting 10,000 victims from Cité  l'éternel. The Gheskio Center and US doctors are assisting those who are ill or injured. We invite ALL Quisqueya Medical Faculty students to come and assist us in organizing daily life in the community and providing basic care. We will wait for the venue to be secured (fences have to be put up again) before starting distributing food, in order to avoid looting.

On the Turgeau campus, the esplanade and the parking lot will also be transformed in a care center for the victims. Since we will be located near the main drinking water reservoir in the city, we are trying to set up a small water treatment plant in order to produce 3 thousand gallons of drinking water per day, to serve residents and newly installed "colonies" in peripheral neighbourhoods (Turgeau and Debussy). Aide et Action is expected to get the equipment needed for the plant from the Dominican Republic. Quisqueya students are invited to form a solidarity network. Helping the more fragile among us will actually give them the strength and inspiration to rebuild their individual lives and the community.

International aid has been abundant but poorly coordinated and there are great frustrations. The population has spontaneously formed "colonies" in various areas; these groups must be helped to get organized rationally while relief efforts are channeled to those who are most in need.

Thank you to all our friends for expressing their solidarity and affection. The hardest time is still to come, when we have to rebuild and spontaneous solidarity fades away. It is up to Haitians to get organized with the help of a network of friends acting out of solidarity rather than out of the search for media visibility only.

For additional information in English and from a Caribbean regional perspective, please check Dr. Norman Girvan's SITE.

This diary is cross-posted at Daily Kos and European Tribune.

Celebrating the Birth of Bud Powell

Today (September 27, 2009) I want to celebrate the birth of a towering figure in BeBop (Jazz) who I would venture to say is scarcely known in the United States outside a small coterie of musicians (and not necessarily US musicians). This is a very sad fact when one realizes that the music often referred to as "Jazz" is considered America's true Classical music.

Earl Rudolph "Bud" Powell was a formidable pianist and a composer, having contributed not an insignificant number of pieces to the Classical American repertoire [Listen to his "Dance of the Infidels"]. Literary critic Harold Bloom included Powell's 1951 recording of his composition Un Poco Loco for Blue Note Records among the greatest works of twentieth-century American art. The following extract from Powell's official web-site gives us an idea of this man's true stature:

Bud Powell is generally considered to be the most important pianist in the history of jazz. Noted jazz writer and critic Gary Giddins, in Visions of Jazz, goes even further, saying that "Powell will be recognized as one of the most formidable creators of piano music in any time or idiom."

It should be noted that Bud Powell's life was a tragic one as well; a tragedy all too well known to people of African American descent during the post-war years. This nevertheless did not detract one bit from the man's enormous talents:

From 1940 Bud Powell took part in informal jam sessions at Minton's Playhouse, New York, where he came under the tutelage and protection of Thelonious Monk and contributed to the emerging bop style. By 1942--44, when he played in the band of his guardian Cootie Williams, he had already developed his individual style in most of its essentials. After sustaining a head injury during a racial incident in 1945, he suffered the first of many nervous collapses, which were to confine him to sanatoriums for much of his adult life.

Precious little is known about the enigmatic figure of Bud Powell. Some of what we do know is thanks to a French man that befriended Powell in his waning years. However, there can be no doubt that his music constitutes a towering legacy, testimony to which can be found in such recordings as Jazz Giant, and The Amazing Bud Powell.

My favorite (living) pianist?

Original; Talented; Chops; Has feeling and emotion; Like Oscar Peterson, he can tear apart a concert grand, but can also play a ballad so tenderly that it will soften the hardest heart. Plus, he knows the canon: Diz, Bird, Bud...

Problem? His originality makes him inaccessible to a lot of people (kind of like Thelonious Monk)

Thoughts on the Persistent Racial Divide in America

It is enough to make one sick. After hearing the Glenn Becks and Rush Limbaughs of this country carry on ad nauseum about "reverse racism" and "hatred" of whites, the common illusion that is desperately being peddled is that America (white America) has solved the race problem and moved on. We have a black president, right? Why are you (blacks) complaining? According to this narrative, any individual that continues to talk about discrimination or racism is talking about a past that no longer exists in the present, and has a chip on their shoulder, refusing to let go of his or her victim-hood for some nefarious reason. This, my friends, is a big lie that not only ignores the fact that the civil rights of black people were granted to us after we fought tooth and nail for them (they were not given to us gratuitously nor out of good faith but begrudgingly and are not by any means guaranteed into perpetuity), but dismisses a number of unresolved and festering issues.

It is precisely one of these unresolved issues that I want to touch on briefly: There is a dirty little secret harbored by a not insignificant population of our Americas (and not only in the United States, but everywhere that black slavery was practiced) that is rarely discussed by either side in this unresolved black/white divide, and that haunts this land to this day. It is a story that goes to the heart of why the race question has not yet been fully resolved and will not be resolved until perhaps something like a South African style Truth and Reconciliation Commission is constituted to deal with it. It has to do with the de facto mixture of the races throughout the history of the United States (in particular) and its implications (legal and otherwise) for the "family trees" of many of today's US citizens of mixed African-European ancestry.

If the mixing of the races in many of the states of the United States was against the law up to the nineteen fifties, then what explains the existence of a significant population of mulattoes (interestingly that term derives from "mule" which is no innocuous term in and of itself) at the time? The dirty little secret is that during slavery, many slave owners either fell in love with or took advantage of their black slave women thereby giving rise to a "phenomenon" of interracial concubinage that produced a not insignificant population of "mixed race" offspring. It should be noted that one-eighth black parentage remained sufficient for disenfranchisement for many years.

Note: The true nature of these relationships has been subject to historical interpretation, discussion and, in the worst case, to simple conjecture. In the scholarly treatment of such a contentious and often taboo subject, I would adopt the position of Dorothy Denneen Volo and James M. Volo, authors of Daily Life in Civil War America:

There is considerable disagreement over the level of true affection found between such (mixed race) couples. Noted Civil War historian Eugene D. Genovese claims that many slaves fell in love with their masters and vice versa. In The Plantation Mistress: Woman's World in the Old South (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982), Catherine Clinton finds such a conclusion lacking in sensitivity with regard to the dynamics of sexual exploitation. The authors have decided to defer to Clinton's view. {footnote # 40, page 80}

The vast majority of the offspring of these relationships, whether they were sincere relationships based on "true love" or not, or a product of rape were never recognized and ended up leaving many "mulattoes" with truncated family trees. Now please step back and consider this for a moment. This is not some minor detail or insignificant fact to be conveniently swept underneath the rug and forgotten, although that is precisely what happened in the vast majority of cases by the white side and in some cases the black side as well. It was done for many reasons but initially for the basic reason that miscegenation and intermarriage were deemed illegal well into the post emancipation period. Even after intermarriage between blacks and whites became legal and Jim Crow became a thing of the past, many of these relationships were still not acknowledged.

Since such relations were "taboo" for so long, one can only speculate on the nature and motivations behind the "original act" and the possible reasons for them not being acknowledged, even after the passage of time. Racism undoubtedly played a role in many, if not the vast majority of cases. Even in the case of an acknowledged and legal union, as Volo and Volo describe in their text:

...some white Southerners demonstrated a long commitment to their black mistresses, recognized their mixed-race offspring, and attempted to provide for their upkeep and well-being. Often this took the form of a public admission after death, and many interracial alliances were recognized in a planter's will. The white children of such masters often went to great lengths to undo those parts of their father's will favorable to their biracial siblings. {Daily life in Civil War America, page 77.}

Nevertheless, each case would require its own independent investigation and the circumstances surrounding each would undoubtedly turn out to be as diverse and unique as any individual family experience in the history of a people. It shouldn't take the detached observer long to deduce that at the root of many problems of non-recognition lie legal problems involving possible property claims and inheritance. It's hard not to imagine many former slave owners watching with regret as their former slaves obtained equal legal status as citizens of the nation... Or with terror in the case of a slaveholder that had fathered progeny with a black "concubine". What would prevent a slew of legal claims on the property of such a former slave holder?

We have seen recently how some black individuals (primarily celebrities like Chris Rock, Al Sharpton and Oprah) have begun to uncover some long buried "secrets" within their own family histories, with some discovering ties in the process to sometimes prominent white individuals. Clearly the wounds in America have not healed, and to express that it is truly unfortunate to see certain people pressing the wider society to move on as if everything has been resolved is, in my opinion, an understatement.

THROW THE MODEL OUT!

The following was published today in the Puerto Rico Daily Sun [Year 1, No. 198: p. 13]

It is way past the time we in the Caribbean and Central America should have abandoned once and for all the export based economic model that was more or less thrust upon us by our principle trading partner to the North. Unfortunately, much of Central America and a dwindling number of insular Caribbean states continue their fruitless pursuit of assembly industries for export to the US market. The assembly process is known in the US as 'production sharing' and the topic has been, until recently, a fixture of sorts among researchers at the US International Trade Commission (USITC). They regularly published lengthy reports ostensibly for members of the US Congress intent on maintaining as much employment as possible from their quondam industrial base within the borders of the United States. I am familiar with these publications because I used them frequently in my own research.

Hence, I am very familiar with the volatile nature of production sharing in the Caribbean Basin from its inception in the late sixties and early seventies to its virtual institutionalization in the eighties via the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) and its many incarnations or reincarnations thereafter up to and into the new millennium. Once the import substitution model of yore was abandoned and countries slowly began to buy into the new outward oriented export paradigm, opportunities arose for entry into the largest and most lucrative market in the hemisphere (that of the U. S.). I won't go into the geopolitical forces behind this new “paradigm” other that to draw people's attention to the fact that the CBI was enacted “for” our region under the Reagan Administration shortly after the US invasion of Grenada, a period in history which also saw the rise of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and several other insurgencies throughout Central America.

Preferential access schemes such as Section 807 of the US Tariff Schedule (subsequently replaced by Section 9802.00.80 of the new Harmonized Tariff System) linked with the Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act, as the CBI was more formally called, stimulated the garment assembly industry, which has historically been the largest sector by far in export processing zones throughout our region. A recent World Bank study [PDF] notes the region has witnessed 30 years of unilateral preferential access to the United States for certain products under the CBI and subsequently through the Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act (CBTPA), enacted in 2000. It correctly asserts that these preferential agreements have shaped the Caribbean external trade structure.

For example the garment/textile sector I refer to above grew from less that 1% of Nicaragua's exports to the United States in 1990 to close to 63% by the year 2003, according to data from the Economic Commission for Latin America [CEPAL-Mexico, May, 2006: pp. 29 - 30; PDF]. Although not as dramatic, a similar trend occurred throughout much of the rest of the region with garment/textile exports from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and the Dominican Republic going from 26%, 29%, 24% and 39% respectively of exports to the US in 1990 to 60%, 87%, 78% and 49% in 2003. It should be noted that the Caribbean Basin carries out the vast majority of its external trade precisely with the United States. By all measures, this data should be viewed as a success story from the point of view of proponents of the export paradigm. As a matter of fact, the recently enacted Central American, Dominican Republic Free Trade Area, CAFTA-DR was crafted to a large degree to solidify those gains and provide for further growth into the future.

The problem is that the crafters of this policy ignored a glaring but simple truth that a beginning student of international economics is capable of explaining to anyone with an ability to listen. The truth revolves around a concept known as “trade diversion”. Anyone even remotely familiar with the ins and outs of worldwide garment commerce would have been aware that there was a gradual process of trade liberalization going on that straddled the turn of the century and that would profoundly impact importers like the United Sates. Added to that was the fact that the garment/textile powerhouse of China would be joining the free trade club, so to speak, and would consequently overwhelm any other exporter within the US and other markets, if free trade were to prevail.

What is disheartening, not to say thoroughly outrageous, is that US authorities were well aware of it, judging by the voluminous output on the topic produced prior to the fact by researchers at the USITC, not to mention half a dozen or so other non-government think tanks. Yet, US authorities perpetuated the preferential access schemes that “shotgun married” the Caribbean Basin's garment assemblers to their own moribund textile mills via the CBTPA. William C. Gruben of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank was succinct when he described several years ago the outcome of the identical phenomenon in the case of Mexican textile/garment exports to the US:

“By their very nature, regional accords lower tariffs and regulatory burdens for members, giving them an edge over nonmembers. Trade diversion occurs when these preferential trade agreements encourage higher-cost imports of member countries to replace the lower-cost imports of nonmembers. Where trade diversion exists, economic theory suggests that all good things must end—at least for those that have benefited from the trade preferences. ... When the importing countries extend preferential trade benefits to more nations, the boom from the original diversion may be followed by a bust as new trading patterns emerge and the world’s low-cost producer regains its advantage. This may not always occur, but it’s exactly what happened with Mexico’s textiles and apparel. With the erosion of Mexico’s NAFTA edge, China increased U.S. sales. Mexico lost market share—and as a result, employment fell in the textile and apparel maquiladoras.”

And this is the exact same thing that occurred with the Caribbean Basin's US based export model! We bought into the orthodoxy, acquiescing ever so eagerly to the US marketing ploy like a herd of oblivious lemmings plunging trans-like over the perennial cliff. As if to rub salt into the wounds, the World Bank now tells us, as we founder in the throes of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, that although preferential trading schemes were established as a development tool to stimulate and diversify our exports, the prevailing consensus is that“…trade preferences have not delivered expected results...they have not helped overall trade performance”.

We have now come full circle. Can anyone honestly blame the region if some member countries are seeking out alternatives to US policy prescriptions, no matter how wrongheaded or erroneous they might be perceived as being from the US side? Who is going to want to follow a US economic strategy for the region if we have obediently been following them for the last thirty odd years only to end in the situation so aptly described by the latest World Bank report? President Obama rose to the US presidency on a promise for change. He was also given a rousing reception at the recent Summit of the Americas from a region reeling from economic decline. Is this really a new beginning or will we be left to eat merely words?

Remembering Freddie Thomas

I am deeply saddened to learn of the passing of musician Fred Thomas, who I got to know when I had the privilege of teaching at the University of the Virgin Islands' St. Croix campus for two years. He was a wonderful bassist and could play the piano professionally as well. He was known to my uncles Marvin and Neal, and joins them in that pantheon of Virgin Islander jazz musicians in the sky. Of particular fascination to me was the fact that Freddie had played bass with the original band of Puerto Rican icon Rafael Cortijo. Before I left St. Croix to return to Puerto Rico, he gave me these copies of photographs of Cortijo y su Combo. In this first one, you can see Uncle Freddie at the far left with his characteristic lit cigarette in his right hand.

In the next photo (below) you can see Freddie in the front row with the legendary Sonero Ismael Rivera's right hand on his right shoulder and Maestro Cortijo's right hand on Freddie's left shoulder.

Finally you have the band with a number of other musicians and singers. I would be grateful to anybody out there that could help me identify them individually.

The last picture is of a Jazz quintet which belonged to renown drummer Monchito Muñoz. Legendary trumpeter Juancito Torres was on trumpet and of course Uncle Freddie played the bass. I wish I could have heard them play if even on a recording. Juancito could really hit those high notes, almost like Dizzy Gillespie.

When in St. Croix, I always went to see Freddie play at the Blue Moon in Fredriksted. He was ailing then and despite suffering from emphysema, he continued to smoke. Maybe I was imagining things, but he always seemed to perk up when I arrived and would then proceed to play his heart out. I gave him my electric keyboard when I left, cognisant of the fact that he didn't have much more time to live. Rest In Peace Uncle Freddie. I know you're up there playing a mambo for St. Peter.