Monday, October 4, 2010

Sun Oct 03 2010

The prestigious Foreign Policy magazine has identified Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar as one of "high-powered heads of State (who) have bucked the trend" of male leaders. The periodical, which reports in-depth on diplomacy, economics and ideas exchange, has listed Persad-Bissessar in the company of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Argentinian President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and other female leaders. The magazine did a photo essay on 15 female world leaders, under the headline "Women in Control." Foreign Policy noted that more than 75 per cent of parliaments worldwide are male.

But that trend has been changing in recent years, the publication observed. The magazine pointed to the fact that Dilma Rouseff was in line to be elected president of Brazil yesterday. The publication said Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar "has stated her goals in office to be cutting down on crime and slashing the island's 20 per cent poverty rate." Time magazine recently indentified Persad-Bissessar as one of the world's top female leaders.

Magazine lists Kamla among top female leaders | The Trinidad Guardian

PITRI PAKSH: CEREMONY FOR THE LIVING

Every year, during the September/October period for approximately fifteen days, Hindus observe the Pitri Paksh (loosely translated as ancestors' time), by engaging in reflection, prayer and remembrance; a manifestation of gratitude to those who have paved the way and who continue to live through us. As is the case with many ancient ceremonies, misconceptions are common for the purpose and theological principles underpinning the rituals are not generally understood. All Hindu rituals are grounded in the social, psychological and meta-physical domains with a core goal of maintaining order in the family, society and country. The ritual is not the end itself but rather a means or process towards a more noble and lofty cause of remembering and acknowledging the sacrifice and contribution of those who have died.

In this regard, the rituals performed in this period are similar to remembrance ceremonies in both the secular and religious worlds. Examples of the former are Memorial Day and Remembrance Day. Gratitude is one of the stronger threads of the social weave and hence a primary aim of the period is to engender and foster this essential and critical human characteristic. It is thus for the living who perform it. The continuity of life (spirit, energy and matter) is expressed in the tenet of reincarnation and thus the prayers that are proffered are meant for the benefit of the reincarnated ancestor in his/her present life. To many, this is a difficult concept to acknowledge or grasp, particularly those whose construct of the world is assembled from inflexible dogma.

Such individuals can be found in both the secular and the religious communities who share a commonality; a one-dimensional binary world view, one that is inconsistent with the inter-related multi-dimensional complexities of the universe. Religion, like other endeavours of man, seeks to provide an understanding of the world.

The problem with dogma based belief systems is that the evolving world is constrained to conform to a model that might not represent reality. On the other hand, process based belief systems are able to accommodate changing situations and thus are more relevant as they provide a model that is aligned with existing situation. Hinduism and Buddhism are process based religions which provide the individual with the algorithms for effective decision making.

Authority, responsibility and accountability lie fully in the domain of the individual upon which the concept of karma and its corollary, reincarnation, are based. The theory of karma indicates that our present life trajectory at any point in time is the dynamic conjoint of past and present actions. Since we are accustomed to thinking that the outputs of actions are limited to a finite time scale, conceptualisation of the continuity of the effects over large distances and time periods requires effort. To give a simple example, an earthquake occurring for a few seconds near the eastern shores Pacific ocean take a few hours to be felt on the western shores; as it takes time for the waves to propagate. Now imagine, a few minutes later, a second earthquake occurs a bit west of the site of the original quake.

Waves near the western shore would be the conjoint of both waves; that is, its present characteristics is a product of both actions (quakes). Put another way the effects of the past and present are coexisting and by extension, the future is a product of the present and past; the idea behind karma. At the physical plane level, the performance of the rituals for one's ancestors is a product of a past action or consistent set of actions. By performing these rituals, the future actions of one's offspring are influenced. In other words, an action by an ancestor one generation removed will affect the actions of a successor one generation forward. Put another way; actions from the distant past impact on the present and future.

The clear conclusion, even if one did not subscribe to the reincarnation and karma, is that the worship of the ancestors impact positively on the living, over many generations. To say otherwise is to deny the fundamental characteristic of what makes us human. To criticise the ceremony as worshipping the dead is to admit one's own ingratitude to one's fellowman.

From article by Pundit Prakash Persad

Sun Oct 03 2010, Sunday Guardian

PITRI PAKSH: CEREMONY FOR THE LIVING | The Trinidad Guardian

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Why the fuss? Why Women? | Trinidad Express Newspaper | Woman Magazine

Friday, October 1, 2010

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T&T politics: A new direction? - Caribbean360

An exciting discovery - Sea Shells Far From Shore | Trinidad Express Newspaper | News

An exciting discovery - Sea Shells Far From Shore

By Richard Charan
By Editor, South Bureau

Story Created: Sep 30, 2010 at 11:18 AM ECT

Story Updated: Sep 30, 2010 at 6:28 PM ECT

The man who found it thought it was treasure of the pirate kind - only without the wrought iron and wood chest.

How else could the mind explain, he would say later, all these crystals and sea shells emerging from the ground? And at a place so far from the coast - eight miles at least - past hills and valleys and homes and highways?

A great hiding place, Bob Ramoutar first thought, when his giant excavator unearthed the shells while digging into a hillside in early September.

His discovery while clearing land for a housing development off rural La Cuesa Road, Freeport, has piqued the interest of researchers at the University of the West Indies. A suggestion that the find could have been a shell midden left behind by Trinidad's early people (similar middens have been found in other parts of Trinidad) was dispelled by Dr Basil Reid, senior lecturer in Archaeology at the Department of History, University of the West Indies, when the massive scale of the find began to emerge.

Shells by the millions, no billions, some resembling what you might see washed up on a tropical beach, others the size of an adult's hand, none having any business so far from the sea, the layman would think. And mixed up in it all, quartz (rock crystals).

This, Dr Reid said, might be something of interest to his colleague, Dr Brent Wilson, senior lecturer in Paleontology and Sedimentology, Petroleum Geosciences Programme, at UWI's Department of Chemical Engineering.

Wilson has examined images of the shells found at the site - there are at least five distinct types, and made observations. The discovery, Dr Wilson said, would be sure to excite the Geological Society of Trinidad and Tobago, of which he is an executive committee member.

This is what Dr Wilson reported.

"I concur with Dr. Reid that this is most likely not a man-made shell midden: from the photographs showing the site, the number of shells is small compared to what one would expect in a midden. Also, they appear to be widespread. Instead, this appears to be a community of shells enclosed within a muddy deposit, and probably has a geological rather than an anthropogenic (man-made) origin.

The shells themselves are thick and heavy, one being an oyster. Many show a heavy ornament of ribs. Such molluscs typically live in shallow water, where the thick shells protect the creatures from damage during heavy seas. The ribs also confer strength and stability to the shells, a bit like steel added to the framework of a building (when the contractors remember put it in, that is!)

I would hesitate to give an age for these shells, other than to say that they do not look old in a geological sense (i.e., we may be talking thousands rather than millions of years). I shall assume that this is so. Sea level has not been constant throughout geological time, but has gone up and down as ice caps at the poles have alternatively melted and grown. At times when the ice caps are particularly small, sea levels will be high, the melt water being released into the oceans. Perhaps, then, the shells mark a time when sea level worldwide was higher than it is at present.

There is an alternative explanation: Trinidad is in an area where two of the world's few crustal, tectonic plates meet. Southern Trinidad lies on the South American plate, while northern Trinidad lies on the Caribbean plate. (There's a thing few realise: drive from Port of Spain to San Fernando and you go from the Caribbean to South America, the actual point of passing from one to the other not being far north of the Forres Park Flyover.)

Plate boundaries are characterised by tectonic activity -- a fancy term for earthquakes. These occur as the plates rub together, producing uplift such as had formed the Northern and Central Ranges. The earthquakes can be very powerful and destructive to lives and property. (It was earlier this year suggested that Trinidad has enough stress stored within the Central Range to produce a magnitude 7 earthquake. Unfortunately, we cannot say when it will take place.)

Perhaps, then, the shells mark a period of one or more major earthquakes, when a section of the seafloor was uplifted, bringing the shells with it.

It might be suggested that the shells were transported inland during a tsunami associated with an earthquake. However, this is highly unlikely. Tsunamis (and storm surges associated with hurricanes) are not capable of transporting such large shells far. Instead, the material they would wash inland is fine sand and microscopic shells just a few millimetres across".

Bob Ramoutar intends preserving the site to allow researchers time to conduct a study.

richard.charan@trinidadexpress.com

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Why the fuss? Why Women?

Amid the much publicised participation by the Trinidad and Tobago at the United Nations Summit to review the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), somewhat overlooked locally was the announcement by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon for a USD 40 billion plan aimed at saving the lives of 16 million women and children over the next five years. The UN has placed this within the framework of a new organisation, UN Women, to focus on how redressing the needs of women.
While from our small-island perspectives, it may sound like a whooping sum, in effect, it represents less than a miniscule fraction (some 0.0015 percent) of the net income of G8 countries.
Not to be ungracious, even this can significantly dent gender imbalances, if properly managed to ensure that the funds do indeed reach the vulnerable communities and impact on their lives in ways that are meaningful and long term. It is up to the national countries to form and implement plans and programmes to make this happen.
I have heard much skepticism from several quarters - including local women - who should know better, about why the fuss, why women?
This plan came about because development experts and the UN, now awakening to the voices that have pointed out links between the financial, food and other crises, and the economic and other effects of exclusion, discrimination - whether by design or accident - against women who comprise some one half of the world’s population and therefore at least 50 percent of the world’ economic potential and potential for future prosperity of their children.
The experts now acknowledge that the economic and political empowerment of women remain critical for the eradication of poverty, economic growth and sustainable development, and for the wellbeing of families and communities. Better educated women have a better chance in the job market and in decision making at all levels. This benefits the entire society. When women own and control resources and decent and productive work, they can ensure their families and children have a better livelihood – better health care and education for their children which can break the cycle of poverty and deprivation. This pivotal role of women is clearly recognised by the advertising industry, for instance, which has been tailoring their advertising to capture the imagination of women with purchasing power in our societies. It is not rocket science. There is a simple logic in the fact that lifting women from poverty is key to generating economic growth and development and can lead to greater prosperity for all.
Yet, in many countries, women still face barriers to ownership of property, access to education and work opportunities, if not just in law and policies, but also in practices that remain entrenched and internalized which gives them unequally access to be represented in economic and political decision-making and are unable to share equally with men in the benefits of development. Furthermore, women seem to be harder hit by the onset of the world financial crisis.
UN MDG records show that in Trinidad and Tobago, the employment-to-population ratio of men is almost 50 percent (73.1%) to women (49.3) and trends of the last few years with the world financial crisis and economic recession show greater declines in the ratio for women to men. UN data also shows that while there is some progress towards the MDGs overall, and in T&T in some areas for which data exists, inequalities persist not only between women and men, but also between women in urban and rural areas and from different income levels. These are the gaps that action programmes to utilise the UN-40 billion dollar plan should seek to bridge.
According to the UN, in the developing world, women are more likely than men to work in vulnerable employment – either as ‘own-account ‘ (self-employed)workers or as contributing family workers -- characterised by low earnings and productivity and lack of security and benefits. While own-account work is male-dominated, women make up the majority of those who contribute family workers. In 2009, one in every four employed women in the developing regions worked as a contributing family worker, compared to only one in every nine employed men. For most of the areas that will indicate the degree of meeting development goals there were no specific data for T&T, but following are some of the data from the Millennium Development Goals – Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment, progress chart 2010 prepared by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

Monday, September 27, 2010

Women & girls

Power and poverty combine in a lucrative trade in humans. This, coupled with inadequate national border patrols, lack of implementation of domestic labour laws, and underdeveloped community systems — community support mechanisms, shelters, a reliable community police — make Trinidad and Tobago open playing field for human trafficking. Official denial of the fact or that there is no recorded evidence has not made it go away. Various civil society interests have been raising the alarm of this country's involvement in the trade for some time now; there has been talk of links to the human trade with the escalation of kidnappings over the last few years. It is usually only when mention is made in international reports or in the occasional police raid on a 'gentlemen's club', that officials raise their heads, usually in denial.

In the broadest sense, the trade has its basis in power structures that promote the unequal relationship between men and women that make women economically dependent; and systems and mechanisms that make equal access to resources by women and girls prohibitive (e.g.: to own property; open a bank account). It is spurred by increasing demands for sex workers, stimulated by tourism, and ironically — with medical advances in organ transplants — has gained impetus through a lucrative trade in human organs.

Various international reports, including from the World Bank, note that Caribbean governments have been known to bury their heads in the sands, with continued denials, because the trade supports their tourist industries, the sole mainstay of many of their economies. The World Bank claims our countries also refuse to implement policies and programmes fearing that any such efforts will have a negative impact on the tourism trade. It is a spiral of disempowerment: women suffering the brunt of the impact of global inequalities on developing countries.

Guyana, Colombia, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Suriname, Brazil, and OECS countries are known as active participants in human trafficking for women absorbed into the 'entertainment' and 'tourism' sectors in the Caribbean. Estimates are that more than 60 per cent of Caribbean populations live in poverty; that some 100,000 women and children are exploited annually for sexual purposes in Latin America and the Caribbean; that more than 90 per cent of the some 40 million children in Latin America and the Caribbean who live on the streets engage in sex for money and favours.

Research tells that criminal groups mislead women desperate to improve their life styles about immigrating for lucrative job opportunities, but instead sell the women and children, or force them into sexual slavery to repay costs. It leaves them vulnerable too to HIV/AIDS infection – the Caribbean is the second largest region for HIV/AIDS in the world.

The US State Dept Trafficking in Persons Report, states:

"Women and girls are lured with offers of well-paying jobs, and are subsequently exploited and controlled through threats, withholding of pay or insufficient pay, and physical violence. In coastal areas, traffickers promise rural women and girls jobs as domestic servants, then coerce them into working in shops or homes for little or no pay, or sell them to brothels."

The labour shortages of the last few years have seen Trinidad and Tobago scrambling to source from outside. A partly illegal trade in 'domestic' workers from Guyana in particular and for 'store workers' from other small islands and Latin America has been growing, under the oblivious noses of the authorities and to the data collection agencies, as well, it seems. It is well-known that this region's has been casting its net wider, to source labour from China for instance, while large loopholes for exploitation persist with lax implementation of labour laws, and, as recently surfaced with Colombians and Chinese, additional problems with language and integration for examples.

There may not be much data to support claims that women and children of the region are being sold into this kind of slavery, but the evidence can be readily sourced from communities if effective reporting mechanisms are put in place as part of the social support structure. One does not have to wait for the annual appearance of a citation in the US State report to stimulate the chorus of voices claiming and denying Trinidad and Tobago's involvement in human trafficking. Lack of data has been a perpetual 'out' for our Governments in official reporting on adherence to international democratic and human rights standards, including in its report to the OAS corruption disclosure mechanism (MESECIC). The availability of data does not imply that the problem does not exist, and who, if not the Government, has the responsibility for facilitating the collection and analyses of data.

Increase in the minimum wage may be a step in the right direction but it is not enough. What is being done to strengthen the reporting and data capture? Apart from putting in place legal mechanisms — which in themselves are ineffective without enforcement — what other measures are in place for bringing offenders to book? Inadequate policing does not end at our shores.

Even these will not be enough outside of a holistic approach to improving the delivery of social services in T&T. Certainly a gender policy would present a state position on women and children in this country and recognition of their human rights. Empowering and resourcing NGOs can help them provide necessary services including information capture, establishment of shelters for and rehabilitation/reintegration programmes for victims.

The UN estimates that women form half of the world's migrants. They are mainly from developing countries. A large number are between ages 10 and 24, and these women send a larger chunk of their typically lower wages back home to support relatives than male migrants, making their earnings a sizeable chunk of external funding other than direct foreign investments that help boost local economies. Addressing their problems is therefore a key factor in global poverty reduction but at the negotiating table their plights are usually invisible. The plight of female migrants and gender-centred international and national policies and actions must be part of the agenda as the United Nations sits this week to review its Millennium Development Goals and look for measures to more effectively redress poverty.

Dr Kris Rampersad is a media, cultural and literary consultant and international relations director of the Network of NGOs of Trinidad and Tobago.

Published as Women & girls, Trinidad Express Woman Magazine, Published on Sep 24, 2010, 9:35 pm