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.

Goodbye, Benazir

Global Voices Online » The assassination of Benazir BhuttoThe assassination of Benazir Bhutto day before yesterday has the global blogworld talking.I haven't added my voice yet because I honestly don't know what to say. For now, then, I'll simply post links to some of the various coverage of the event; the above link is from Global Voices, which gives a good aggregate of some of the discussion.Some comments:

Taking the issue forward, some blogs are discussing the legacy of Benazir Bhutto, the future for Pakistan and the likely suspects who ordered the assassination, even as the Al Qaeda has claimed responsibility.Red Diary discusses why Bhutto was a target, and the resulting riots.

The strong possibility of the rise of a secularist Benazir into power made her a mortal threat for those in the State who harbored sympathy for Islamic Fundamentalists, with whom the notorious intelligence agencies, such as the ISI, were closely knitted since the Cold War and the Afghan War. Benazir Bhutto become a symbol of resistance against Islamic Extremists - both residing inside and outside the State. She stood secularism and modernity against militant retrogressive and conservative trends.

Global Voices, Why Bhutto, and What Now for Pakistan?

and

Some other perspectives have also emerged, looking at Bhutto both as a possible leader and a mover in international politics. Counter Terrorism Blog says

She was someone who the U.S. could actually work with to seek a way forward for Pakistan in light of the profound challenges posed by religious intolerance and political extremism, the drug trade, governmental institutions that do not provide essential services in many areas of the country, and Pakistan's troubled relationships with of its immediate neighbors -- Afghanistan, India, and Iran.Her faults were also profound, as the well-documented grand corruption cases brought against her and her husband attest. She did indeed treat her country like it was a family-owned business, with corrosive results. These includied her removal from power in 1990 and again in 1996 as the corruption both weakened her politically and played a significant role in her inability to deliver the reforms needed to make Pakistan's government responsive to the needs of its people

The Moderate Voice has a bio on Benazir Bhutto, including information on her father who was also the Prime Minister of Pakistan, and was sentenced to death in the 70s for charges similar to the ones Benazir faced much later.

Global Voices: Bhutto's Death and Impending Elections

I will, however be back. Events like these -- and, on a smaller scale, the murders and subsequent hue and cry closer to home -- make one think that chaos is vanquishing order around the world. But is it?

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.

San Francisco to Offer Care for Every Uninsured Adult - New York Times

San Francisco to Offer Care for Every Uninsured Adult

SAN FRANCISCO — Since contracting polio at age 2, Yan Ling Ho has lived with pain for most of her 52 years. After she immigrated here from Hong Kong last year, the soreness in her back and joints proved too debilitating for her to work.That also meant she did not have health insurance. Not wanting to burden her daughter, who was already paying her living expenses, Ms. Ho delayed doctors’ visits and battled her misery with over-the-counter medications.“Sometimes the pain was so bad, I would just cry,” she said. “I didn’t know what else to do.”Last month, unable to bear her discomfort any longer, Ms. Ho went to North East Medical Services, a nonprofit community clinic on the edge of Chinatown, and discovered to her delight that she qualified for a new program that offers free or subsidized health care to all 82,000 San Francisco adults without insurance.

It amazes me to realize that, in the world's greatest country, there are people -- ordinary, everyday people, not just the people who slide under society's skin and get blamed for stuff they don't actually cause, like the homeless, who live on the fringes of society, or immigrants, who have taken their chances, leaving their homes, or any other undesirables -- ordinary upstanding individuals like you or me, who are barred from obtaining regular medical treatment because they do not have private medical insurance.It's not a new realization by any means. I have long known it; and we hear it frequently, as Americans debate the issue and as we debated national health insurance here at home. But it's not often that it comes home to me. After all, I live in a society where there is no income tax at all, but where the taxes we do pay nevertheless manage to provide us with universal access to basic health care. We have clinics in almost every community, and we have public and private hospitals, so that almost all of us can obtain some measure of health care.Now this is crucial for me. I belong to a family that is relatively uninsurable. Unless we want to sell our cars and mortgage and remortgage our homes, the fact that our fathers all died before their 60th birthdays, from various chronic or non-communicable illnesses makes it virtually impossible for me and my cousins to get private insurance. Oh, I have coverage. But it's group insurance, and it's tied to a place of work. I wanted to be able to have a more flexible work situation. One of these days I would like to write full time, be self-employed as it were. So I applied for Bahama Health, which is friendly and warm and fuzzy and all that, and which made me think that it was the biggest group insurance in the country, but it turned me down.In the USA, I would be uninsured. And this is unfathomable to me. If our small nation, the size of a flea on the American elephant, can provide universal access to basic health care to all of its citizens, its immigrants, and even its tourists, I cannot for the life of me comprehend the reasoning behind it. After all, this is the nation that prides itself on its democratic principles and sets itself up to be the monitor of the free world. I can't see what principle of democracy is served, however, by excluding huge numbers of people from accessible health care.In San Francisco, the city government is making its own decision about this idea.

The initiative, known as Healthy San Francisco, is the first effort by a locality to guarantee care to all of its uninsured, and it represents the latest attempt by state and local governments to patch a inadequate federal system.It is financed mostly by the city, which is gambling that it can provide universal and sensibly managed care to the uninsured for about the amount being spent on their treatment now, often in emergency rooms.After a two-month trial at two clinics in Chinatown, the program is scheduled to expand citywide to 20 more locations on Sept. 17.Whether such a program might be replicated elsewhere is difficult to assess. In addition to its unique political culture, San Francisco, with a population of about 750,000, has the advantages of compact geography, a unified city-county government, an extensive network of public and community clinics and a relatively small number of uninsured adults. Virtually all the city’s children are covered by private insurance or government plans.

Now this -- the fact that the programme may not be replicable beyond San Francisco -- is another thing I find remarkable. The USA, we're told, is a federation, a place where the federal government has to balance its power against the state governments. It's a system that sounds pretty good on paper, most of the time. The states control a number of different things, like whether they execute people and how they do it, what kind of education system they provide, at what age people can drink liquor, how people can get married and to whom, and, presumably, health care. And there's apparently a growing grass-roots movement demanding access to basic health care for all, especially given the fact that the most influential generation of Americans in our time (the so-called Baby-Boomers) is aging. But this movement is being blocked. In the USA, that great democracy to our north, it would seem that the major opponents to healthcare, whether it be state-wide or federal, is the insurance industry.This should come as no surprise. The USA is a capitalist nation, and insurance companies are capitalist empires. While they appear to be fatherly and nurturing and friendly, they all too often bear elements that, in any other industry, would scream "scam" writ large. Don't get me wrong. Insurance works best when it's dealing with things -- house insurance, car insurance, property insurance -- all these make sense to insure. I don't mind paying a fairly reasonable premium to help me out when bad things happen to my possessions. Even life insurance makes some sense; it's not designed to help me, after all, but to keep me from being a burden to people I love, to help cover funeral expenses and so on. Insurance of these things makes sense.But health insurance? I can't help thinking it's the biggest scam there is.If you're in the business of health insurance, forgive me, but here's why I say that. Most companies refuse to insure people who are likely to claim on their insurance, like the elderly, or people with a history of chronic diseases, or people who (like me) come from a family where people have a history of chronic diseases. If they don't drop you, your premiums go up. So the healthy get insured, and happily pay their bills, while the unhealthy can't.Now here in The Bahamas, while that's an issue, it's not as bad as we think it is; even the uninsured can get basic health care here. We Bahamians, this little black country, have figured out how we can cover everybody with basic health care with the non-income taxes we pay. In Nassau, particularly, our HIV patients receive treatment. All our mothers are entitled to pre-natal and post-natal care. Our elderly get taken care of. Even our tourists, whether they are insured or not, get to use our hospitals and clinics. And we never grow tired of complaining how our illegal immigrants can find all the health care they want or need -- a fact, by the way, which I believe is a strength of our society and our government, not a weakness.Because, contrary to what the federal and state and county and city governments of every part of the USA seem to think -- except for, apparently, San Francisco -- I happen to believe that people are more important than things. I don't believe that my health, or the health of any other human being for that matter, is a commodity that can be valued by employers or insurance companies and abandoned when it the profit margin grows too narrow.It would appear that this is a peculiar idea. It would appear that capitalism leaves very little room for people when money is on the line. The San Francisco initiative is being challenged by an employers' federation. There are laws, apparently, that determine what "benefits" employers can offer, and how; and it would appear, further that health care is a "benefit". Not a right.

A final financing mechanism has placed the program in legal jeopardy. To make sure the new safety net does not encourage businesses to drop their private insurance, the city in January will begin requiring employers with more than 20 workers to contribute a set amount to health care. The Healthy San Francisco program is one of several possible destinations for that money, with others being private insurance or health savings accounts.Late last year, the Golden Gate Restaurant Association challenged that provision in federal court, arguing that it violates a law governing employer health benefits. A judge has scheduled a hearing for early November.

I'll say it again. I don't mind paying car insurance, life insurance, or house insurance for peace of mind. I don't even mind paying for health insurance, if it means that I can qualify for more sophisticated or daring treatment, should I ever become very ill. But what I cannot comprehend is the idea that I should pay health insurance simply to be seen by a doctor at all. I do not believe that my health is a commodity that the "market" -- any market -- should determine. That's what I elect my governments for.Not, apparently, in the great democracy of the United States of America, where the greatest medical system in the world is accessible only to those who can pay. American governments, apparently, view the health of their citizens as just another thing, to be bought and sold and valued by an industry that has no real accountability to the citizens they "serve".So hats off to San Francisco. And hats off to The Bahamas, to all the politicians through the ages who made it a priority for all Bahamians and residents and visitors to gain access to medical treatment no matter what their status.

Here's a shout-out

to all my peeps (and others) in Haiti, Cuba, Jamaica, Cayman, Belize, and everyone else affected by Hurricane Dean.Batten up, hunker down, and wait it out.  Our thoughts and prayers are with you.

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.

Let's Give 'em Something to Talk About

There's a site called Strange Maps, which fascinates me. The owner is a person after my own heart, but more diligent; he(?) understands that mapping is an exercise not only in making sense out of the world, but in dominating the world. A map, like a book, is not a fact; it is an interpretation of a fact, a representation of what the minds understands to be reality. But that "reality" is shaped in the mind by all sorts of things, from the relatively harmless influence of the environment to more sinister influences, like the need to amass or maintain power over people's minds and actions.Let me explain what I mean by that. Take the following images, for example.The first is the "normal" map of the world -- the Mercator Projection, designed for sailors from Europe. If you believe what you see, you are left with the impression that Europe and Asia and North America are far bigger than they actually are -- that the USA is as large as South America, and that Europe isn't much smaller than Africa. But what you don't think about is the fact that this map is in fact a distortion of reality. The world is a globe, not a flat piece of paper, and the lines of longitude are not parallel, which means that the distance between them at the equator is greater than the distance between them closer to the poles. These distances are not fixed, which means that Canada isn't as long as it appears on a map.The second is an adjusted map of the world, which attempts to present a more accurate view of the situation. In this map, the distortions err in a different way. Instead of imitating the actual shape of the continents, it attempts to draw them according to the actual sizes of the land masses See how the equatorial continents suddenly appear far larger than the northern ones? They are accurate in terms of size, not shape.Then there are the maps that approach the world from different centres. In the one we're most familiar with, the Atlantic Ocean is in the middle, which means that when readers of Roman letters look at it, the first thing they see are the Americas and the second thing they see are Europe. This is a EuroAmerican centric view of the world. In the this one, Japan is in the centre of the world. Quite a difference, huh?And then there's the map that places the South Pole at the top of the map rather than the North Pole. It appears upside down to us -- but why should we imagine that North is up and South is down? If we're from the southern Bahamian islands, it's the other way round -- and who's to say we're wrong?But I say all that to say this. This is the map I wanted to share.It's from Strange Maps, and shows how big the continent of Africa really is in terms of the square footage of different dominant countries. In the case of the USA, the non-continental US states have been added to the total size of the country, so that the sizes of Alaska and Hawai'i have been calculated in. But what's really illuminating about the whole image is the discussion that it spawned on the blog. If you read it, you will understand just how much influence what people want to believe -- what they do believe according to their deepest prejudices -- leads them to justify nonsense.Something to think about, isn't it? Something to talk about, too, I hope.

A view from South Africa

I want to link to a debate on Ten Taxis, a South African blog, for a couple of reasons. One of them is that, in commemoration of the Abolition Act, two Ministers of Government here — Fred Mitchell of Foreign Affairs and Alfred Sears of Education — organized two days of activities that helped to focus our minds on slavery and history and by extension ourselves. (A week ago, Cultural Commission and the Festival of African Arts had done a similar thing; but ministers have higher profiles).Anyway. On Friday gone, we had a day in communion with African and Caribbean intellectuals -- Nalidi Pandor, Minister of Education for South Africa, and George Lamming and Maureen Denton, Caribbean writers. Need I say who Lamming is? (If you have to ask, go do some research of your own). Denton is a playwright and actress, and they collaborate. This was hosted by the Minister of Education. Yesterday, in Fox Hill, we had a day in communion with them again, but in commemoration of abolition. This was hosted by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the MP for Fox Hill.The difficulty is, though, that these commemorative activities have already been politicized in ways that do far more harm than good. Someone somewhere has decided — absurdly — that slavery and emacipation and the general history of the Bahama Islands are a PLP issue, and not a national one. Thus the discussion of slavery is painted in navy blue and yellow, and is carefully walked around on cat feet by those people whose political allegiance is paramount. As for those of us who don't care to politicize these issues, we are invisible and unheard.I'm linking to this debate, because it's about the position of Afrikaners in the new South Africa, and raises a number of issues that I think are relevant to the debate about slavery and emancipation, and — more important — raises them in such a way as to be fairly rational and open to engagement.We can only dream of such an exchange occurring here. Can't we?Anyway, here are the relevant links. And here's to Ten Taxis for posting the exchange.

• Original post - an article in the Sunday Times of South Africa
• First series of responses
• Second series of responses
• Third series of responses

The point about this is that South Africa's liberation is a whole lot more recent than ours. And unlike us, South Africa is not apparently shrinking from the difficult discussion that has to be had in order for the victims of oppression — who include both the oppressors, who have sacrificed their humanity, and the oppressed, who have had their humanity stripped from them — to begin to heal. Of course, I could be wrong, and looking at the issue from the perspective of too many thousands of miles truly to understand. But I found the exchange, and the fundamental respect which surrounded it, a far cry from the kinds of rhetoric in which we engage round here, where the fact that black Bahamians also owned slaves appears to provide readers and writers of The Tribune with a defence of slavery rather than raising the more pertinent question — whether any of the slaves owned by Free Blacks (or even by slaves themselves) were ever Europeans. I think not. The oppressed are not excluded from oppressing others. But we have to ask the right questions to draw sensible conclusions. In an election year, the rightness of the question is the last thing on our minds.In the absence of sensible discussion about oppression and liberty and history that deals specifically with us, then, I point you to South Africa to get a sense of what such a discussion could be.