Fear: 4 packs, 10 oz. each

Fear is the name of an art exhibition mounted and curated in Canada, but produced in Trinidad and Tobago. It's the work of Christopher Cozier, whose bio notes that he is

an artist and writer living and working in Trinidad [who] has participated in a number of exhibitions focused upon contemporary art in the Caribbean and internationally [and who is, among other things,] a Senior Research Fellow at the Academy of The University of Trinidad & Tobago (UTT) and ... Artist-in-Residence at Dartmouth College during the Fall of 2007.

What's exciting about his exhibition is the way in which it's produced. It might be perplexing for most of us, who are used to the prettiness of art, the decorative quality of paintings, the controllability of our response to them: it consists of "a rubber stamp and 3x3x3-inch cardboard boxes that gallery viewers could stamp and take away with them from the exhibition." (Fear, 2009: 5)  But that is entirely the point. The boxes and the stamp symbolize the state of the world at this end of the first decade of the 21st century: consumers of the fear exported by the USA that justifies and legitimizes the way in which that country exercises its authority as the last superpower on earth. It's exciting, collaborative and subversive all at once. As Andrea Fantona, curator of the exhibition, explains:

The addition of this participatory element to the exhibition was exciting. Furthermore, producing theelements comprising Available At All Leading Stores resulted in a fascinating reversal of the production-consumption chain that generally defines North-South relationships. Here I was in Canada, producing awork of art for consumption here in the North that was conceived and designed in Trinidad. The irony ofthe process rang loudly for me. It seemed that the age-old system of capitalist development that favouredthe North had been turned onto its head, as I was now adding value to an idea, turned into commodity,conceived in the South, yet produced and distributed in the North. (2009: 5)

What's even more exciting, for me, is the way in which Nicholas Laughlin, fellow Trinidadian writer and editor, responded to Cozier's work. For J'Ouvert (for those of you who don't know what that is, follow the link and look it up) this year, he created his own riff on it: a cardboard box turned into a headpiece for the festival, on which he wrote

PARADISE100 PACKS 10 OZ EACHMADE IN CHINADISTRIBUTED IN T&T

As he says:

For three or so hours on J’Ouvert morning, Paradise is an empty space, an absence, in a cardboard box Ibalance on my head. Watch me, turning into a metaphor for a nation bearing the burden of false advertising and false hopes. If anything and everything is for sale, if art is just another product with varying profit margins, if Cozier can taunt us with the joke of commodified Fear, then I can re-commodify, re-sell, re-brand. (2009: 15)

Oh yes oh yes.

Hell freezes over yet again

Those of you who follow this blog will know that this happens whenever I agree with Weblog Bahamas' Rick Lowe (and vice versa).

But his commentary on illegal immigration just makes sense. See below:

While the country has a major problem with illegal immigration and people should not break the law by hiring immigrants that are not entitled to be here, there must be more facts to be considered.

Why would people knowingly break the law and hire an illegal immigrant for example?

1. Could it be that the law is too restrictive on allowing them in within the legal frame work?

2. Could it be that minimum wage laws prevent the hiring of Bahamians for the same job?

3. Could it be that Bahamians no longer do the menial tasks that the illegals usually do?

4. Could it be that Mr. McCartney is simply grand standing for political points?

I suspect it is a combination of the above points.Our problems with illegal immigration by Haitians are very similar to those faced by the United States from Mexican's sneaking across the border looking for a better life.

However, they do not seem to be able to deal with the problem either.

As the Cato Handbook for Policymakers suggests:

"Any lasting solution to the challenge of illegal immigration must recognize the legitimate needs of American employers to hire the workers necessary to meet the demands of their customers."

Hopefully one day our policy makers will offer more serious dialogue when addressing such a serious subject.

Continuing to excite our base instincts with rhetoric, rather than examining the fundamental reasons for the problem will never solve this dilemma that crosses all political lines.

WeblogBahamas.com: Branville McCartney Bahamas Immigration Minister speaks out

Are we all criminals?

Got this from zotz, aka Drew Roberts, who is a passionate proponent of creative commons licensing, of a rethinking of the copyright laws of the twentieth century:http://blip.tv/scripts/flash/showplayer.swf?enablejs=true&file=http%3A//blip.tv/rss/flash/730724&autostart=false

Download media

 I wanted to post it, and link to the page it came from, because I agree with it, 95%.  My reservation comes when I'm thinking about our local creative work.  Creative commons is all very well when it's applied to corporations versus individuals -- the very issues that are being discussed above.  But what happens when corporations lay claim to the intellectual property of countries, cultures, groups?  What recourse do the creators have then?  I am still a supporter of copyright law when it applies to those peoples and cultures who did not get to benefit from the turning of knowledge into capital that occurred in the twentieth century; I believe that without the fundamental comprehension that what we imagine and make is worth cash we in the Americas will continue to do what we were established to do by Europe and its successors in North America -- provide the raw material for others to refine, market, sell, and profit from.But check out the video.  It's still something worth discussing.  Good food for thought.

CARIFESTA: Arrival in Guyana

The biggest barrier to Caribbean integration is the difficulty of moving around in the region.All right, let's face it.  We were travelling from the northernmost point in CARICOM to just about the most southerly; there's got to be some challenge from moving from The Bahamas to Guyana.  But does it have to be this much?I don't know.  It would seem that the barrier posed by Cuba and Hispaniola to The Bahamas, the so-called "Gateway" to the Caribbean, is real.  You can't fly further south than Jamaica if you're flying directly from The Bahamas, not if you're flying commercial airlines. Everything else has to go through Miami, which is forty minutes to an hour out of the way.  So this is the route we took, flying on the routes that the airlines provide for us.  Now lest we imagine that the limitations on moving around the region are neocolonial, posed by the outside, barriers to movement controlled and managed by our former colonial masters, know this:  there are any number of local and regional carriers that I can name.  I'll start by calling the names of those I have already flown in my lifetime:  Bahamasair, Havana Air, Air Jamaica, Caribbean Air (the airline formerly known as BWIA), Liat.  Ooh, look:  five airlines that belong to the region!  And yet not one of them (Air Jamaica excepted) crosses the barrier created by the Greater Antilles to link The Bahamas with the Caribbean proper.The result:  it takes forever and costs a fortune to travel from north to south in the Caribbean, and vice versa.  Although it takes a mere 3 hours as the crow flies for a plane to get from Nassau to Port of Spain, and a mere 4 and a half, or 5 (depending on the Gulf Stream, I suppose) from Nassau to Georgetown, it took us from 12:13 (a quarter past noon) till 2 a.m. to get from Nassau to Georgetown yesterday.Part of the problem, let me tell you, was Caribbean Air.  I won't go into details now, but rest assured I will post about it.  There was a layover of 4 unscheduled hours in Trinidad and Tobago, a layover that was apparently foreseen but not foretold, a layover that has yet to be satisfactorily explained either to the passengers affected or to those people meeting us in Georgetown.We arrived here, eventually.  And we were comfortable enough last night, very well received, and treated with courtesy by the Guyanese.  But it didn't quite take the taste of our ordeal out of our mouths.

Hosting Carifesta X : Stabroek News

...we have every right – and every reason – to continue to believe that an event like Carifesta can help to fashion the economic integration that we have talked about for so many decades and which, it appears, is even now, being contemplated with renewed interest by sheer force of circumstances.

...One of the things that Carifesta X can and should do is to remind the entire region of our collective economic potential. Those who come here from across the Caribbean will, we hope, get an opportunity to come to a more refined understanding of Guyana’s economic potential, in areas like agriculture, agro-processing, mining, and jewellery production – and hopefully, those experiences will not only create a greater appreciation of the value of intra-regional    trade but will also generate ideas that will lead to an acceleration of intra-regional investment including investment in the growth and preservation of the region’s culture.

Hosting Carifesta X : Stabroek News

The whole article's worth a read.

Microwave not recommended to bake a quality bread product

I'm baking a frozen roll of French bread for breakfast.  That's what it said on the package.Know this.  As long as I'm awake, little things run through my head, rather like the ticker tape display you see at stock markets.  Little communications from my subconscious flash across my conscious mind and distract me from what I'm doing.  And unfortunately for me and those around me, those communications have emotional reactions.  Recently, I've been operating in a state of low-grade anger.  It's a bit like a low-grade fever; it makes me irritable some of the time, snappish and sarcastic (which has its humourous moments).  Most of the time, though, it just makes me depressed.  It's like being locked in a tiny room with no windows and a nagging relative.The thing that makes me angriest these days is the fundamental disrespect that we offer ourselves as Bahamians, our country, and (yes) our culture.  The three are inseparable, and the disrespect is pervasive.  I'm not talking about crime or politics here, although both are symptoms.  I'm talking about the conviction that far too many of our leaders seem to have that we are really second-rate people. Our country can't compete.  We are incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial.  We can't develop ourselves, so we have to find foreigners to invest their money in our economy to develop us for us. Etc. (Shut up, Nico).The disrespect comes out when we see what we invest in ourselves, in our society, in the formation, cementing, and celebration of our identity as a sovereign nation.  I keep raising the point that we are the third richest independent country in the western hemisphere.  So forget the fact that Bermuda and Cayman are richer than we are; they're still colonies/dependencies of Britain.  The Bahamas is richer than every other country in the Americas than the USA and Canada.And what do we have to show for it?  What monuments, institutions, works of art, buildings, public spaces, have we provided for ourselves (and only ourselves) over the course of thirty-five years?  What we did have we have also destroyed -- Jumbey Village comes to mind, along with Goombay Summer, the National Dance School home (the institution still exists, limping along in near-oblivion, but its building was demolished for no reason anyone can give me, whose land still stands empty next to Oakes Field Primary School, and its rent now costs the government a goodly and unnecessary packet), the Dundas Repertory Season, the Government High School.Great nations invest in symbols.  They understand the need to spend hard money on creating objects and institutions that mean -- or can mean -- something to the people who belong to the nation, and they create a sense of belonging.  Washington D. C. is an example of the kind of grandness that preceded the greatness of a nation; the American founding fathers imagined a great nation, built the symbols, and let the country catch up to their vision.  In Britain, squares and statues and public places and institutions and buildings are created for every great moment in their history, and you can see those great moments literally laid out on the ground.  In the capitals of our Caribbean neighbours, public and private funds are invested in monuments -- statues, institutions, promenades, parks -- so that even the most humble of their nationals, and the most arrogant of their visitors, can get some idea of who they are.But here in The Bahamas of the twenty-first century, we put up our parks and our monuments and our et ceterae only when we beg the help of our foreign investors.  Meanwhile, we take the taxpayers' money and pour it into failed institutions or foreign pockets and cry poor-mouth when asked to help artists explore our identity though self-expression.  The people who get our money do not know or care who we are, except that we are whores who will let them wipe their feet on us when they are finished with us.  And without them our governments (no matter what initials they wear), who are stewards of the third richest independent government in the New World, choose again and again not invest a penny in the development of the Bahamian person, the Bahamian soul.So how did I get here from what's written on a packet of frozen French bread?Simply this.  The French, who have invested millions in their people and their symbols (some of which, like the Eiffel Tower, could be regarded as a horrendous waste of time, aesthetics and money) and who hold in their greatest art museum not only the great art of the French but the great art of the world (the Mona Lisa, after all, rests in the Louvre) have an unassailable sense of themselves.  People who know claim that the French are arrogant.  But after all, they have things to be arrogant about; their governments' investment in culture has made even the most ordinary and semi-educated Frenchman proud to be French. And that pride leads to quality -- a quality that is recognized world-wide, and that turns, in the end, into money again.Hence the message on the bread package.  Microwave not recommended.In this microwave land our politicians and administrators have created for us -- that we have allowed to be created for ourselves -- it's the kind of thing that nags me, and threatens to drive me mad.

Budget

The Bahamas' budget debate is taking place now.  As a civil servant, I am not free to comment as I would like.  So I'll just ask questions instead.I am listening to the debate, and the rhetoric is impressive.  But what is the reality?  Is this budget really preparing us for the 21st century?  Do we even understand what the 21st century will require of us?Here's the link to our budget.You can download bits and pieces or the whole thing in .pdf format.  I encourage you to do so.Here are some links to important global developments that will impact our economy in short order.World Trade Organization (WTO)UNESCO Cultural Industries Overview

• UNESCO Cultural Industries FAQ

CARICOM Cultural Industries (pdf)

Hell thaws again

Hat tip to Rick Lowe, for linking to this blog.Since our brief moment of harmony, though, I think we're going to part ways again. Here's why hell couldn't have stayed frozen for long.I'm a great big fan of The Wire -- the TV show about the Baltimore streets that's set up to be the classic story of cops and robbers, but which is a whole lot more.You watch The Wire, you get an appreciation of how our government works, and doesn't. I've long thought that our country runs rather like the municipal government of a major American city. So fine, the Mayor has more direct and absolute power perhaps than the Prime Minister does -- he doesn't appear to have a cabinet that he has to work with or around (or which he has to put to work for him); but the very same deals and development schemes and favours and lobbying take place. Well, maybe not the lobbying; we're not so good at that round here. But pretty well most of the rest. Not sure whether the violence that occurs on the streets of Baltimore is matched by our crime, but for that we can only be thankful (and hey, I might be wrong -- we don't have any TV show to reveal to us our underside).The show is created by David Simon and Edward Burns. David Simon was known to me because I was a fan of Homicide before I was a fan of The Wire. He's got grittier. In fact, he claims to have become a cynic. And he's got a view of the world, and of the USA, that rings true -- for the most part -- for me. (The remainder of this address can be seen on YouTube).Enough woffle from me. Watch the clip(s), and see what you think.[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJNkL12QD68&border=1&hl=en]What struck me most about Simon's take on the world -- the postindustrial world -- is his claim that human beings are being valued less and less. I don't know whether I agree with that position in its entirety, but I certainly see where he's coming from -- and I'm not sure he's wrong (though I would like him to be).What also struck me, and what I can accept more readily (though not wholeheartedly), is his claim that whenever the USA has had to choose between human beings and profit, it has chosen profit. Anyway.***I posted the above last night, through the thickness of imminent sleep, and didn't take the time to explain why I think Rick and I would fall on different sides of this issue. I've been hard pressed to articulate just what my overall objection to unrestrained capitalism has been for much of my life. Simply stating I have socialist leanings isn't enough. Simon's claim that capitalism makes people worth less than things rings true to me. I'd like to be shown I'm wrong, but I don't know that I am.It's not coincidental that the rise of capitalism parallelled the development of the slave trade, or that the abolition of the slave trade in Britain occurred at roughly the same time as the rise of factory work. Profit over people from the beginning; why spend time on housing, feeding and preserving the lives of forced labourers when it can be cheaper to pay small wages to factory workers who then have to go fend for themselves?I'd love to be wrong about this. It would make living in this society -- a society that can only survive on entrepreneurship and the selling of things and ideas -- a whole lot easier, but the brand of capitalism I see practised again and again, both here at home and abroad, does not make me hopeful.

Grief Overload; Different Maps

I have been dreaming about the dead for a month now, about all those who died, in our opinions, before their time. Whatever that means. Today we remember another one: Winston Saunders, who died a year ago today in Jamaica.And just for today, I'm posting something completely different. This is from the website Strange Maps, which I visit from time to time, and which never disappoints, though sometimes stuff posted there is more interesting to other people than to me.Here's a map called "North America, the Balkans Version". Laying aside the various chauvinisms in the title (which I'm not ascribing to the creator of Strange Maps, by the way) -- the exclusion of Mexico and Central America from the continent, the non-recognition of any islands but ours (The Bahamas) and those already part of the US and Canada, and the north-west European use of "Balkans", it's a very interesting concept, orginated by Matthew White, and well worth exploring and thinking about.I offer it for your ponderation.

Something to think about

The Barbadian national budget communication.The Barbadian Budget replyI found both on the Nation (the Bajan newspaper) site. While we bask in our smug conviction of our superiority in every way, it would be instructive to have a look at how Barbados is designing its economy to meet the demands of the 21st century.Then compare it with our plans. (Do we have plans? Or do we just have rhetoric?) Compare it with our budget communication, anyway.(To compare it with our other budget communications, go here for the budget archive.Last year's budget communication.)Draw your own conclusions.

Forget the Song and Dance, Culture is Big Business

In my travels as Director of Culture, I've had the opportunity to meet and talk with some dynamic Caribbean professionals who are passionate about the development of their countries and of this regions through the cultural industries. One of them is Josanne Leonard, a Trinidadian media consultant who is crusading for adjustment in policy and for the laying of a foundation on which to build those industries. She sent me the following article, which I'm reprinting in full below.

---

reprinted with permission

CUT THE SONG AND DANCE, CULTURE IS BIG BUSINESS

July 2007By Josanne LeonardThis is the age of the Creative Economy. And as if to parallel the era of the plantation economy that fuelled the empire, it's a time when our creative industries are increasingly a key factor in driving cultural and economic development in the more industrialised countries while gasping for air in the nurseries and creative enclaves of own Caribbean backyards.For the uninitiated, uninformed or unbelievers, creative industries in the Caribbean as elsewhere encompass activities which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent and which have the real potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property. By way of definition, such industries would include:• Live and recorded music• Television, radio and internet broadcasting• Film, video and other audiovisual production• Performing arts and entertainment• Writing and publishing• Fashion clothing/design• Visual arts and antiques• Graphic design/software development/animation• Crafts and designer furniture• Advertising• Architecture• Educational and leisure softwareOne glimpse at this list would make the point that many of these are areas of creative enterprise in which the Caribbean has always excelled, notably in music, writing, and the performing arts. Yet we remain 'impoverished' with the perception that our development is so beyond our reach and not possible without the begging bowl. The reasons for this phenomenon are many but come to one crucial point….a lack of belief in ourselves, at least on the part of those who are charged with speaking on our behalf.Even as the intellectual property of the region takes flight to add value to external economies, the Caribbean is itself fast becoming a net importer of our own cultural content packaged and sold back to us from firms in the north. Such is our desperate need to be rubber-stamped and validated from the outside, even when it involves content and creativity born in the belly of the Caribbean.Inexplicably, alongside this occurs another piece of madness in which we spend huge sums on tourism budgets to promote festivals and films that rely on foreign artists, broadcast media and film companies. We pay for these with our scarce foreign exchange earnings (US dollars), own no media rights to exploit once the events are done and find ourselves blocked from merchandising any of the said images in any form. Conversely within the CSME, our artists and creative enterprises in the region have to contend with filling out forms to travel with their instruments/tools of their trade and, in some instances, are taxed. They pay duties and tariffs on paper, ink, digital technology, computer parts, instruments and the list goes on. Try sending a promotional CD or DVD to a radio or TV station or mount a traveling art or video festival within the CSME and one begins to understand that the cultural workers and the enterprises that support them have no real value in the economic life of the region. A sad consequence of inadequate or absent robust public policy needed to enable the development and investment in our creative sectors.But it's not just the governments who are missing the big picture. The Economic Intelligence gathering and market analysis of firms like PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Ernst and Young are producing the detailed global outlook reports that demonstrate clearly that many of today's most successful companies are broadcasters, publishers, entertainers and games designers, and they are growing fast. Because cultural/creative products are information-based, the rapid advance of digital technologies and the globalisation of communications networks and creative industries have put the cultural sectors among the fastest-growing in the world. Yet, with few exceptions, the traditional Caribbean private sector is yet to awaken to the possibilities of divestment and investment in the creative industries while our banks remain closed to the vast majority of creative entrepreneurs, most of whom are micro and small enterprises. In the more advanced economies of the world, these sectors are showing annual growth rates between 5% and 20%. The 'old' industrial giants of the 50’s and 60’s such as General Electric, Phillips, Sony and even a French water company now own some of the brand new names in the list of top transglobal firms: Time Warner, Disney, Bertelsmann, Universal and News Corporation. Today, culture is big business.Connecting the dots from our cultural sectors to industrial development can no longer be discussed in terms of platitudinous, condescending ideas about promoting or sponsoring the arts and culture; it must be put on the table in terms of policies and entrepreneurial strategies that focus on the quantifiable benefits of creative endeavours throughout the economy. We are compelled by external forces to move away from dependence on our traditional exports and in the case of T&T, to diversify the oil and gas-driven economy. This requires a revolutionary human capital approach to investing in the creativity in our society, rather than an exceptional industry approach with well-meaning but piece-meal 'handouts' for entertainment and cultural entrepreneurs. Its also means serious capitalisation manned (and woman-ned) by real industry professionals (not cultural supporters) for para-statal firms like the Cultural Industries Council in Jamaica and the Entertainment Company of T&T, as examples. The former will lead logically to sustained investment in education and training at all levels, industry development and fiscal investment while the other will perpetuate the 'plug-a-hole' approach. In this regard, Caribbean governments need to be thinking about what they must do to foster innovation and creative talent while developing enabling policies designed to keep our creative industries attuned to domestic and global realities.In June, here in T&T, as regional trade officials met to discuss the European Partnership Agreement (EPAs), two things were confirmed. Firstly, the EU market is virtually 'closed' to us in terms of market access for our audio-visual products and services, something industry experts have been trying to get culture and trade officials to understand ad nauseum. Secondly, there is no co-coordinated response and articulation of policy at the level of CARICOM states on Culture and Trade. This coming fresh on the heels of a Regional Cultural Committee Meeting also held in June 2007 in Havana, Cuba and three years after this issue was tabled by this writer at an RCC forum in T&T; two major regional gatherings of creative entrepreneurs, artists and professionals in 2004 and 2006 under the auspices of the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (CRNM) and numerous on-going consultations with Cultural Industries private sector professionals who have provided industry insights, market information and policy direction to many of the region's governments and bodies like Caribbean Export, UNESCO, ILO, CARICOM as well as to leading economic experts - only to be confronted with requests for more studies and talk shops.As a consequence we had no CARIFORUM positions to press for around the table in discussions with the EU negotiators even while some individual member states have been 'championing' the case for the creative industries in their domestic space. Jamaica has a new Ministry of Tourism, Entertainment and Culture, a reconstituted Cultural Industries Council (formerly the Entertainment Advisory Board), the Film, Music and Media Commission under Jamaica Trade and Invest (formerly JAMPRO); Barbados is about to table a Creative Industries Development Investment Act; Antigua and Barbuda has signalled its intent to produce a Cultural Policy; the OECS Secretariat has identified the Creative Industries as a plank of its economic development agenda and in this regard has had discussions with UNCTAD (which incidentally has no budget for work in this area) while ignoring the work being done in the region; T&T has the Film Company because film has been identified as a significant cultural sector in T&T though the data may tell us otherwise as well as the Entertainment Company of T&T which is yet to officially open its doors and we may yet see the newest incarnation of a Cultural Policy document.The point here is that with all of this activity, we have no public policy framework, fiscal incentives and indicators of enterprise development that make sense of all this hard work. This lack of dialogue filters down to the domestic level whereby various arms of government are not aware of the work of industry and thus a constant re-inventing of the wheel through the convening of various committees, task forces and the call for more studies and reports. Attempts to revive a creative industries private sector presence in one forum of CARICOM, the regional ICT steering committee, is yet to receive a response and at the highest organs of policy making, the COTED and COHSOD and inevitably the Forum of Finance Ministers, creative industries remain a talk shop item.While this may sound critical, it is meant to drive home the point about the need for meaningful dialogue. Finally, there's the need for cultural practitioners and entrepreneurs to do the 'hard wuk' required rather than wait on donor or government handouts. We are moving into a different world now- one where the raw materials are not oil, steel or gas even but information, where the most valuable products are ideas and knowledge, powered not by machines but by the imagination. The time has come for the islands of the Caribbean to seize the opportunities offered by the creative economy as a strategy for socio-economic inclusion and development, nurtured and fuelled by the renewable sources of our national creativity.In coming articles, we will examine some key aspects of the value chain of the creative economy – music, media, and telecommunications- as well issues of marketing and maximising our domestic and global competitiveness.Josanne Leonard is a media, communications and entertainment professional. This article appears in the July edition of the T&T Review, official publication of the Lloyd Best Institute of the West Indies. See my profile at www.myspace.com/josanneleonard. Email your comments to miribai@tstt.net.tt.

The danger of anchor properties

Chris Lowe on Weblog Bahamas makes a point that's been concerning me for a while. The thing about the islands in which the anchor properties are going to be located is that there's going to be a radical change in the way in which people live. To wit:

The thing is that within their communities they are equals.

If I have water all have water. If one's power is off, all power is off.

If I'm eating fish, we all have fish. When the mail comes, it comes for us all.

It has been this way for generations, and there is a certain equilibrium that has been maintained with the common understanding that the burdens and tasks of this type of community life must be shared.

Now though, the Anchor arrives, crown land sold cheap by Nassau political opportunists who tout from the capital the benefits to the community of an oversized development smack dab in the middle of their idyllic existence, an existence little understood by the hooked developer who sees profits in the scenery unspoiled but by subsistence living of a few who know what they have.

Read on.

The complex law about trademarks, globalized

I found this story very interesting in my browsing this morning. In short, it's the account of the tricky law of trademarking, as practised in South Korea, and it affects everybody's favourite coffee chain, Starbucks.It interests me on two sides of the coin. First, the explication of Korean law is instructive. Second, the information that's gleanable about trademarking and copyright law in general is also instructive. For us, who haven't even begun to categorize and protect our collective intellectual property, it's worth a study.Here's a snippet.

People keep pestering me about Starbuck’s trademark problems in Korea. I cannot tell you how many times people who know me and role as a blogger have said “What’s going on in that Starbucks thingy?” The problem on commenting is twofold. One, my interest in the facts, let alone forming an opinion, is basically nil. Second, this really is about as close to straight-up trademark case you can get, it is what it is. However I thought the announced decision last week by the Korean Supreme Court against Starbuck’s appeal against Elfreya (dba Starpreya Coffee) coupled with announcement by Starbuck’s CEO in Hong Kong last month to vigorously protect its trademarks in Korea has prodded me into posting this.

Barbados Tourism Ad

Why am I posting a Bajan tourism ad, you wonder? Why should I?Well, because sometimes it's good to know what the competition's saying.And sometimes it's good to know that the competition's aiming its ads straight at you.Let me know what you think.