Reality in Writing : Caribbean Political Economy

NACLA.org May 16, 2013 It has been 40 years since Assata Shakur was convicted of gunning down New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster in 1973. During the trial, Shakur was found guilty and sentenced to 26-33 years in prison. However, in November 1979, she escaped from the Clinton County Correctional Facility, spending several years underground—eventually receiving political asylum in Cuba in 1984. One would have thought, given the 21 st century’s perpetual war on terror, that Shakur’s killing of a police officer had been largely forgotten, but on May 2 it was announced that forty years after her shootout on a New Jersey turnpike, Shakur had been added to the top of the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list. It begs to be asked why her—and why now? Granted, at the time Shakur sought asylum in Cuba, there was no such thing as the Most Wanted Terrorists list; it was created after the events of 9/11. However, the current head of Al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri , remains on t...

NACLA.org May 10, 2013 On May 3, the Boston based organization  Physicians for Haiti released a report card titled Protecting Peacekeepers and their Public which evaluates the status of the United Nations' efforts to eradicate cholera in Haiti. It has been nearly three years since cholera first appeared in Haiti, taking the lives of 8,289 people and infecting over 670,000. However, through effective management, cholera does not pose a deadly threat if the proper precautions are made. This is where the recently released Physicians for Haiti report card gives the UN a failing grade in regard to their inability to implement practical, attainable, and cost effective reforms. What makes the matter worse is that the new report does not critique the UN for failing to implement idealistic projects, but rather for failing to implement their own recommendations. Two years ago in May 2011, at the behest of Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, the UN put together an independen...

NACLA.org May 3, 2013 On April 23, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago visited Canada to deliver her pitch to make the Canada-CARICOM free trade agreement a reality. The current Canada-CARICOM trade deal, known as CARIBCAN, is set to expire this year because the World Trade Organization stands in firm opposition to its renewal. Persad-Bissessar—who is set to become the head of CARICOM in July— remarked that “Trinidad and Tobago is very open, and we would welcome a free trade agreement, but because of the structure of CARICOM, it isn’t a decision we can take,” she said. “It has to be done in collaboration with CARICOM.” Given Canada’s role as the global leader in mining—home to 75% of the world’s mining companies —and the leading producer of tar sands oil, it should come as no surprise that Canada is seeking to make deeper inroads into the resource rich countries of the Caribbean. However, in contrast to the CARICOM-EU Economic Partne...