Gay-rights activists are celebrating in Puerto Rico after the Senate passed a sweeping bill that bans discrimination on sexual orientation and gender identity. The Puerto Rico Senate voted on May 16, 15-11, to pass Bill 238 just days after San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz issued two executive orders banning discrimination against the city’s LGBT municipal employees. Now, the bill moves on to the House and faces hurdles from a group of lawmakers in the lower chamber who have come out against it. The bill, though, has one famous supporter. Puerto Rican Ricky Martin released a statement in support of the law. “The rights of homosexual people are human rights and human rights are for everyone,” Martin said in the letter released by his representative in San Juan.
For the original report go to http://www.passportmagazine.com/blog/archives/28490-puerto-rico-senate-approves-anti-discrimination-bill-moves-on-to-house.html
The Indian Caribbean Museum, described as “a national treasure, a window to the past, and an opportunity to see history come alive”, has been cited by a National Geographic publication that showcases 500 of the world’s most powerful and spiritual places and guides travellers who wish to visit them, as Paras Ramoutar reports in this article for twocircles.com.
“This is a fitting recognition in just seven years of our existence, especially as we celebrate the 168th Indian Arrival Day May 30,” Sansbhan Jokhoo, the curator of the museum that serves as a link between indentured Indian labourers and the present, told IANS.
“The Indian Caribbean Museum has international prominence and recognition as the only one of its kind in the world. Not even India has one. And before the inauguration of the Kolkata memorial last year planners from India came to visit our facility,” Jokhoo said.
The Kolkata memorial, in the city’s Garden Reach area, remembers the indentured Indian labourers who left India during the 19th & early 20th centuries to work on plantations in the West Indies.
Between 1845 and 1917, approximately 148,000 Indians were brought to this country, principally from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, and worked to rescue the decaying plantations following the abolition of slavery by the British government.
It is to keep alive their memory that Satnarayan Maharaj, secretary general of the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha (SDMS) launched the museum, which features in “Sacred Places of a Lifetime – 500 of the World’s Most Peaceful and Powerful Destinations”.
The collection includes items such as rare musical instruments, agricultural objects, cooking utensils, pieces of clothing, ancient photographs and historical books. Objects of historical and aesthetic value include a sapat (wooden slipper) jata (grinding stone) boli (gourd bowl) and hassawa (grass knife). There is also a huge copper basin that was used for boiling cane syrup in the sugar factories up to the 1930s, and a dekha (a wooden contraption used for grinding cocoa, coffee beans, corn and rice).
The museum, which has become a research centre with the country’s National Archives, also houses an art gallery, a reference library and a computerised genealogical database. A botanical garden is also in the making. The institution is a member of the Caribbean Museum Association, which comprises 20 institutions spread across the region.
“The Indian Caribbean Museum is a national treasure, a window to the past, and an opportunity to see history come alive. To many visitors, it evokes memories of the past, a link to the present, and a vision for the future. The museum serves as a foundation for collective memory, cultural continuity and national development,” Jokhoo said.
“It provides a common experience that families can share across generations and serve as a link between revered ancestors and living people. The museum provides information on the cultural heritage of Indians in the Caribbean to themselves and to people of all ethnic backgrounds,” he added.
“The Caribbean Indian Museum holds fundamental importance and relevance to the continued kinship and affinity with India, and within the entire Indian diaspora, as it has myriad symbolic, cultural, religious and transcendental interpretations and meanings for all. It remains a monument for posterity. It will remain ageless,” Jokhoo said.
Since its inception, in excess of 45,000 persons from all walks of life from the four corners of the globe have visited the museum, according to Ann Marie Ramhit, an assistant.
She said that Dennison Moore, who wrote the Canadian government’s policy on multiculturalism, recently donated 107 books reflecting different aspects of India and the diaspora to the library.
“This donation has augmented our educational stock for research, as well as for leisure reading,” Ramhit added.
Winston Dookeran, now the Trinidad and Tobago foreign minister, had in 2006 opened the museum, located in the west-central part of Trinidad.
For the original report go to http://twocircles.net/2013may23/indian_caribbean_museum_nat_geo_list_500_sacred_places.html
Scientists say three to six major hurricanes will hit US, some in areas far beyond those typically associated with extreme storms, as Suzanne Goldenberg reports in this article for London’s Guardian.
Americans were warned on Thursday to brace for an extremely active hurricane season – less than a year after the devastation of Sandy, which hit the east coast in October 2012 – with 13 to 20 named storms, including seven to 11 hurricanes.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, releasing its annual forecast, said 2013 would be prolific in raising storms out of the Atlantic and Caribbean. Of the predicted hurricanes, Noaa predicted that three to six could be major hurricanes, rated category three and packing winds of 111mph or higher.
Thursday’s forecast was well above the average of 12 named storms, eight hurricanes and three major hurricanes. Administration officials also warned that the impacts of those storms – as with Sandy and Irene in 2011 – could be felt in areas far beyond those typically associated with hurricanes and tropical storms.
Sandy killed scores as it made its way across the Caribbean to the north-east US. While it was only a category two storm when it made landfall near Atlantic City in New Jersey, Sandy caused more than $75bn in damage. Lower Manhattan was knocked off the electrical grid for days because of storm surges and coastal communities have yet to recover.
“As we saw first-hand with Sandy, it’s important to remember that tropical storm and hurricane impacts are not limited to the coastline. Strong winds, torrential rain, flooding, and tornadoes often threaten inland areas far from where the storm first makes landfall,” said Kathryn Sullivan, the acting Noaa administrator.
Noaa scientists said there were three main causes behind the forecast of an extremely active season. They included a continuation of an atmospheric climate pattern, which includes a strong west African monsoon, that has been contributing to high activity during Atlantic hurricane season since the 1990s. Warmer ocean temperatures in the Atlantic and Caribbean oceans, where many storms originate, are also making for stronger storms. Officials said temperatures were on average about 0.8 of one degree fahrenheit above average.
El Niño, which can inhibit storm systems, was not expected to develop during this year’s hurricane season. The season runs from 1 June to 1 November.
“There are no mitigating factors that we can see that will suppress the activity,” said Gerry Bell, Noaa’s lead Atlantic hurricane forecaster. “The computer models all point to an active, or very active, hurricane season.”
Thursday’s forecast was released at a time when Republicans in Congress are sharply scrutinising Noaa’s role in forecasting. Earlier in the day, a house committee held a hearing to discuss privatising some of the forecasting functions that are overseen by the premier scientific agency. There has also been criticism of Noaa’s messaging in advance of Hurricane Sandy, and whether its decision to officially downgrade the storm when it made landfall in New Jersey induced a false sense of security among some coastal communities.
Noaa officials, in unveiling their 2013 forecast, noted improvements to computer models that would allow better far-range prediction of storms. New Doppler radar data, to be introduced in July, will allow forecasters to better analyse rapidly changing storm conditions, officials said. However, the officials said it was impossible at this juncture to predict which coastal communities along the Atlantic coast are most likely to be hit this year.
It is also not yet clear when the storms will hit. As Sullivan noted, Sandy struck in the waning days of the hurricane season. “Hurricane Sandy was at the very end of the hurricane season and yet was one of the most devastating storms that we have ever seen,” she said.
But officials said repeatedly that residents the length of the coast – and beyond – needed to prepare in advance, in order to be able to ride out storms in their homes or, if needed, have an exit plan in place. Such preparations should include putting aside a 72-hour supply of food and water at home, or having an evacuation plan in case of storm damage or flooding.
“This is a very dangerous hurricane season,” said Joe Nimmich, who directs disaster response and recovery for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “If you are not prepared you may become one of the statistics we don’t care to have.”
For the original report go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/23/noaa-forecast-active-hurricane-season
The special issue, edited by Lorna Burns and Wendy Knepper, seeks to “sound new directions in Harris studies and attempt both to reinvigorate the current file and establish a new agenda for future scholarship.”
Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Vol. 49, No. 2, 01 May 2013 is now available on Taylor & Francis Online.
Special Issue: “-Scapes” of Globality in the Work of Wilson Harris
This new issue contains the following articles:
Articles Revisionary “-scapes” of globality in the work of Wilson Harris: introduction Lorna Burns & Wendy Knepper Pages: 127-132 DOI: 10.1080/17449855.2013.776361
The reality of trespass: Wilson Harris and an impossible poetics of the Americas Gemma Robinson Pages: 133-147 DOI: 10.1080/17449855.2013.776372
The “impossible quest for wholeness”: sugar, cassava, and the ecological aesthetic in The Guyana Quartet Michael Niblett Pages: 148-160 DOI: 10.1080/17449855.2013.776374
Cataclysmic life in Wilson Harris’s Jonestown Wendy Knepper Pages: 161-173 DOI: 10.1080/17449855.2013.776376
Philosophy of the imagination: time, immanence and the events that wound us in Wilson Harris’s Jonestown Lorna Burns Pages: 174-186 DOI: 10.1080/17449855.2013.776378
Legends of the Fall: on rereading Companions of the Day and Night Michael Mitchell Pages: 187-197 DOI: 10.1080/17449855.2013.776383
Kaieteur: place of the pharmakos and deconstruction Tim Cribb Pages: 198-208 DOI: 10.1080/17449855.2013.776386
Intrasubjectivity in the philosophy of Wilson Harris Paget Henry Pages: 209-221. DOI: 10.1080/17449855.2013.779093
As part of the International Colloquium “La diversidad cultural en el Caribe” [Cultural Diversity in the Caribbean] being held from May 20 to May 24, 2013, Casa de las Américas presents “Rostros del Carnaval” [Faces of the Carnival] a photographic exhibition by Mario Picayo and Mariano Hernández. The exhibition opens tonight, Thursday, May 23, at 7:00pm, at Galería Mariano. The gallery is located at #607 15th Street, between Avenues B and C in Vedado (Havana, Cuba).
For more information, see http://www.lapapeleta.cult.cu/actividad/detalles/1429-rostros-del-carnaval/
The 13th International Conference on Caribbean Literature (ICCL)—Panama in the Caribbean: The Caribbean in Panama—will be hosted by the University of Panama, the country’s largest and most renowned institution of higher learning, on November 13-16, 2013. The deadline for submissions is July 15, 2013.
Description: For this historic event, ICCL will assemble 150-200 scholars from a host of colleges and universities in Central America, South America, the Caribbean, North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. The hosts have arranged a unique program to interact with the Panamanian people as you explore important historical and cultural sites in Panama City, while you engage in lectures, discussions, readings, and performances by prominent Panamanian scholars, writers, and artists. Of course, you will be afforded the unforgettable experience of touring one of the world’s technological, commercial, and geographical wonders: the Panama Canal.
Although the organizers are particularly interested in Caribbean literature, presentatios may focus on any aspect of Caribbean culture. Papers and panels may be presented in Spanish, French, and English. Please send one-page abstracts as indicated below:
(French or Spanish presentations)Dr. Jorge Román-Lagunas Department of Modern Languages Purdue University Calumet 2200 169th Street Hammond, IN 46323-2094 Phone: 219-989-2379 Fax: 219-746-9372 Email: email@example.com
(English Presentations)Dr. Melvin B. Rahming Department of English Morehouse College 830 Westview Dr., S.W. Atlanta, GA 30314Phone: 404-572-3607 Fax: 404-614-8545 Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
For further conference details, visitwww.icclconference.org
Today (May 23, 2013), Campus Principal and Pro Vice Chancellor, Professor Clement Sankat, will host a public lecture and launch of Britain’s Black Debt: Reparation for Caribbean Slavery & Native Genocide, a book by Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, at the Daaga Auditorium, University of the West Indies-St. Augustine at 5:30pm.
Description: Since the mid-nineteenth-century abolition of slavery, the call for reparations for the crime of African enslavement and native genocide has been growing. In the Caribbean, grassroots and official voices now constitute a regional reparations movement. It is a fractured, contentious and divisive call, but it generates considerable public interest.
Britain’s Black Debt is the first scholarly work that looks comprehensively at the reparations discussion in the Caribbean. Author Hilary McD. Beckles is a leading economic historian of the region and a seasoned activist in the wider movement for social justice and advocacy of historical truth, and as such, he is uniquely positioned to explore the origins and development of reparations as a regional and international process. Beckles weaves detailed historical data on Caribbean slavery and the transatlantic slave trade together with legal principles and the politics of postcolonialism, and sets out a solid academic analysis of the evidence. He concludes that Britain has a case of reparations to answer, which the Caribbean should litigate.
International law provides that chattel slavery as practised by Britain was a crime against humanity. Slavery was invested in by the royal family, the government, the established church, most elite families, and large public institutions in the private and public sector. Citing the legal principles of unjust and criminal enrichment, Beckles presents a compelling argument for Britain’s payment of its black debt, a debt that it continues to deny in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Britain’s Black Debt is at once an exciting narration of Britain’s dominance of the slave markets that enriched the economy and a seminal conceptual journey into the hidden politics and public posturing of leaders on both sides of the Atlantic. No work of this kind has ever been attempted. No author has had the diversity of historical research skills, national and international political involvement, and personal engagement as an activist to present such a complex yet accessible work of scholarship.
Professor Sir Hilary McD. Beckles holds a Chair in Social and Economic History, University of the West Indies-Cave Hill, Barbados, where he is also Principal and Pro-Vice Chancellor. He is Vice-President of the International Scientific Committee for the UNESCO Slave Route Project, and member of the International Advisory Board of the Cultures and Globalization Series. A leading voice on reparations issues, he led the Barbados National Delegation and coordinated Caribbean actions at the UN Conference on Race in Durban, 2001. His many publications including Natural Rebels: A Social History of Enslaved Black Women in Barbados; Centering Woman: Gender Discourses in Caribbean Slave Society; and A History of Barbados: From Amerindian Settlement to Nation-State.
For more information, see http://sta.uwi.edu/news/ecalendar/event.asp?id=1925
For purchasing information, see http://www.amazon.com/Britains-Black-Debt-Reparations-Caribbean/dp/976640349X
In his column “Dowd on Drinks,” Bill Dowd (Times Union) writes about how the Bacardi Company is releasing a television commercial that capitalizes on the supposed historical origins of the “Cuba Libre” cocktail—rum and Coke. [Remember to watch the video of the ad in the link below!]
Through all sorts of societal changes and over several generations, the Cuba Libre has endured as a very popular cocktail. The recipe is a simple one: Light rum, Coca-Cola and a squeeze of lime. Where it came from is, as is the case with so many cocktail origins, a matter of opinion.
The most popular version matches that told in a soon-to-be-released Bacardi USA TV commercial — that it was created in Cuba in 1900 as Colonel Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders helped fight for the island’s independence from Spain — and takeover by the U.S. They toasted the victory with the cheer “Free Cuba!” or “Cuba Libre!” in Spanish. The spot, reports Advertising Age, is the first in a series of ads showing historical events that shaped the 151 year-old brand, which has links to the creation of other rum cocktails such as the Daiquiri and Mojito. However, Coca-Cola won’t be getting a free ride on the Bacardi advertising dollar. The ad will refer to the drink as “run [sic] and cola.”
The historic theme may well be in response to competitors’ rum ads featuring historic personalities. Diageo has recast its once silly Captain Morgan as real-life privateer Captain Henry Morgan of the 1600s. William Grant & Sons is pushing its Sailor Jerry rum by using Norman “Sailor Jerry” Collins, a renowned American tattoo artist and Navy man of the mid-1900s. Last year, both brands gained market share on Bacardi, although it remains the top-selling U.S. rum with 35.4% share in 2012, according to Euromonitor International which measures volume of liters sold. Captain Morgan is No. 2 with 23.2%, and Sailor Jerry No. 7 at 2.6%.
Bacardi’s campaign is timed to coincide with Cuban Independence Day on Monday. Interesting, considering both Bacardi and Coca-Cola left the island nation after Fidel Castro came to power. Bacardi now is made in Puerto Rico; Coca-Cola in plants all over the world — except Cuba and North Korea where the product is not sold.
For original post, see http://blog.timesunion.com/dowdondrinks/new-ad-revives-the-history-of-the-cuba-libre/14685/
Xylem’s YSI Integrated Systems and Services (ISS) has been awarded a contract for five marine monitoring buoys by The Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC). The buoys will collect high-quality data for researchers studying climate change in the Caribbean Sea, including the waters of Barbados, Belize, Dominican Republic, St. Lucia, and Trinidad and Tobago. The customized YSI EMM 2000 buoys will measure, record and transmit real-time water quality and meteorological data as key components of a Coral Reef Early Warning System (CREWS). The entire system will be powered by solar panels.
“The Caribbean is a unique part of the world. Our waters are the ‘bread basket’ for the region, and we must be diligent in protecting and sustaining them,” says Dr. Kenrick Leslie, CCCCC executive director. “We are very excited to build our education and research infrastructure with the addition of this important technology project for addressing the impacts of climate change on the Caribbean ecosystem.” [. . .] Coral reefs play an extremely important role in the Caribbean economy for tourism as well as food production and food security. The regions’ unique reefs have been impacted by rising sea temperatures and pollution. Long-term monitoring of environmental conditions in the Caribbean will help researchers track the health of the reefs, among the oldest and most diverse ecosystems on the planet, and mirrors similar systems already installed at key reef sites in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Data will allow development of climate models and ecological forecasting in coral reef ecosystems.
[. . .] Caribbean researchers and scientists from national and regional universities, government coastal marine research departments and non-governmental organizations are expected to use and benefit from the data to be generated by the CREWS stations. The CREWS system will be expandable with additional sensors and parameters—such as CO2 and underwater photo-synthetically active radiation (PAR)—to accommodate visiting researchers who later join the collaborative project.
The CCCCC will work with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and YSI to install and operate this network, beginning in spring 2013. The CREWS project is funded by the European Union and the Global Climate Change Alliance in the amount of US $617,000 (€ 465,000) and is part of a wider climate change project – “The Global Climate Change Alliance Caribbean Support Project” being implemented by the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre.