CARICOM INTELLECTUALS CASTIGATED ON TELEVISION IN EASTERN CARIBBEAN

Jamaican produced Blue Hills CARDAMOM SPICE


CARIBBEAN NEWS ON TELEVISION CASTIGATES INTELLECTUALS OF CARICOM

I don’t remember who it was talking and being interviewed on Caribbean News on Channel 5 television last night. But some guy being interviewed out in the Eastern Caribbean was castigating the intellectuals and academics of CARICOM as useless as teats on a bull. ( more or less ) He went on to say in the interview that CARICOM is full of these sweet talking verbose intellectuals with all kinds of pretty studies, position papers and outlines of CARICOM progress, on paper. What he said on television in a nutshell, was it was all poppycock and show. Just paper writings, with no meaning in rhe real world of Caribbean countries. He went on to say, that unless CARICOM bureaucrats can turn paper plans and studies into real world performance, they were a waste of time and money. What he didn’t say, but I got between the lines was that their Ph’d’s, big titles and salaries and expenses were so much as worthless. These bureaucrats were non-performers.
We more or less had come to the same conclusion in Belize up in our Western rural area. We had a CARICOM SECRETARIAT out here a few months back, promising the world and dreams of opportunity and gold in the formation of CARICOM. Like the guy being interviewed on Eastern Caribbean Television, we here in Belize had come to the conclusion it was just a bunch of people currying favor and selling refrigerators to Eskimos in the Arctic frozen wastes, ( con men selling dreams ) in order to provide themselves with salaried jobs at the expense of the taxpayers of CARIBBEAN countries. The reason I formed this personal impression was because they swore up and down to assist us in Belize with any endeavors. Subsequently we emailed enquires several times to the CARICOM SECRETARIAT for information on investment banks and nobody EVER answered us. Their bureaucracy is as bad as our own in Belize. It is like dealing with a BLACK HOLE. Nobody takes responsibility for management. In the private sector based on cash flow, in and out, profit and loss, you can’t work that way. You would get fired immediately.
The Eastern Caribbean television interviewee went on to complain about the lack of transportation internally for one thing. Which brought to mind the little bit of news we turned up lately that the Blue Hills of Jamaica actually produced CARDOMOM spice and we have a photo of it. We have not been able to buy, or even find CARDOMOM spice in Belize and even though Jamaica produces it, there is none here. In fact, there is none here from Guatemala either, which is the biggest producer in the world. ( we are going to make a week trip to COBAN, GUATEMALA and see what we can buy eventually.) We want the ingredient to test for some export product we have in mind of light manufacturing. My immediate thought was on failing to buy Jamaican CARDAMOM spice here, I would hop on a plane to Jamaica and go see the producers and arrange to buy out their crop and production. Alas, as the guy in the Eastern Caribbean said on television, we have no transportation direct from Belize to Jamaica, by ship or air. No way to get there, so how can you do business? This interviewee also went on to complain about lack of an investment bank to start up businesses in the CARICOM countries. We have lamented that same lack here in Western Belize when we tried to start up CARICOM AIRLINE out of Belize as a bootstrap project. We lost $100,000 usa on the feasibility studies, wasted because we could not find investment capital from CARICOM participants. All they know is BORROWING and LOANS. They don’t have a business clue in the world.
PM BARROW and the UDP Government of Belize are misdirecting their energies into CARICOM. CARICOM is useful for International bloc voting, but otherwise useless, when it comes to economics, business and trade. Our Foreign Policy in Belize should be re-directed to the two CHINA’s. That is probably where our business and economic future lies.