We keep hearing from the “No to ICJ” bloc about a thing called litigation risk. The way they sound, there is no risk in status quo. Well, I have a little story about why status quo is not always a good state.

I see a man in a dory, and he is leaning over and looking through a water glass at a rock. There are “feelers” by the “hundreds”; wow, the rock is loaded with big fat lobsters.

Inside the man’s dory is a pair of fins, a diving mask, and a hook stick. Seems like a no-brainer that he will gear up and go get those juicy bohgaz. But at that moment he wavers. He wavers because the night before he was watching one of those JAWS movies and that has him thinking bad things.

If the man gets in the water there is a possibility that a little JAWS might bite his arm. If the man stays in the dory, status quo, he doesn’t get the lobsters. If he doesn’t get the lobsters he doesn’t earn any money – to buy food, to pay house rent and other utilities, and the school fees for his family’s children.I don’t know if that is a good analogy. But it will do if you allow it to. Risk is everywhere.

Whoa, the “No Voters”pin their hopes on initiatives other than the ICJ, so it is not entirely fair to nail them on their unfounded fear of litigation risk. But every now and then they bring it up, and they have to be told that that is a bird that has no wings.

National Security way out of line

The four leaders from the Ministry of National Security who appeared on camera to tout the virtue of going to the ICJ, they are all Cabinet appointments. If their political bosses prefer others for their posts, they are shifted out.

We can understand why DC Chester Williams would be eager to spout off on the matter. The man is a lawyer, and he just might feel that, like FM Wilfred Elrington,hihnbaanfu this. Properly, he should ask the Police Ministry for leave, or secondment for several months to the ICJ Education Team, so he could go and get in the necessary work for the YES vote.

Hubert in solidarity with CWU

My first take on labor management was that a union was a good vehicle for the manager of a business. I felt that with union bosses addressing the basic needs of labor, management could concentrate more on “quality”, and the development of ideas to advance the business.

I should mention that I have always been socialist in outlook, though I have often described myself as a communist. That communist thing is really for “color”. I am seldom extreme in anything, and communism is as extreme as it gets.

The first place I worked, HHL (Hummingbird Hershey Ltd.), the managers at the office didn’t want a thing to do with unions. We (field officers) were told to discourage any union agents that were sneaking around.

At my second stop, BFP (Belize Food Products), the union was an established thing. I remember my boss, Natividad Obando, poring over the books to prepare for the meeting with the union. Managers in the citrus industry had to be on their toes, because strikes were not uncommon, and one during the harvesting season could deliver a heavy blow.

I remember my boss coming home early from the meeting. He said that when they opened the books and showed the union bosses how dread things were (citrus prices were very low at the time), they readily agreed to stick with the expired agreement.

One of my brothers, Charles, told me that at NOVA shrimp farm, where he was a manager, the bosses said they weren’t against unions, but they were encouraged to make things so good for their workers they wouldn’t want to bring in a union.

Ah, a strike during shrimp harvest could have been devastating. You bet that if there was a union at a shrimp farm, the managers would insist that during harvesting, workers in that section would be considered as “essential services.” And union bosses would not have rolled over because a strike during harvesting would be their absolute best bargaining chip.

A union can make life much easier for business managers. But a union can make things very rough too. There is always the fear of an impractical union boss, one who is out to show him/herself.

Some of these unions are name only. That is a pity because a union, properly run, doing its job, can help drive a nation to excellence.

Our most celebrated union, the BNTU, well, some say they were sitting on their power. That is until Jerry Enriquez (and others) came along and challenged them to prove that teachers “gat wibak.”

We remember PM Barrow screaming foul when BNTU grappled him and DPM Faber. Of course the BNTU had stepped out of their normal wages and work conditions when they read the “riot act” to GoB about their poor governance. The organization did not want to step out: it had to. And it did.

They were the only organization in the country that was capable of putting the bell on the runaway UDP kyats. Glory, they put the “cramps” on some really bad governance. The people shouted, hurray, because they preferred teachers on strike than a bloody revolution. BNTU Forever! Solidarity!

Recently, we learned that one of the great union leaders of the past, Hubert Enriquez, had expressed solidarity with CWU leadership, in what appeared to be a trivial dispute with the Belize City Council. The CWU leader, Mose Hyde, had expressed that the BCC was using “union busting” tactics. And Hubert agreed, saw that the BCC’s behavior was troubling.

What was the BCC doing that was so wrong? They were talking shop with CWU’s workers! If workers feel that they can get better from their bosses thru direct contact, better than they can get thru union contact with their bosses, poof goes the union.

The thing for workers, why they have to stand with their union, is that you might have a good boss today, but quien sabe who tomorrow will bring.

Jimmy is the greatest

In my world, James Earl Carter, Jr. (Jimmy Carter), the 39th president of the USA, is the greatest living human being, by far. With Fidel and Mandela gone, it’s no competition. Carter doesn’t get the credit he deserves, because he is white. If you haven’t noticed, white people only push people who advance white supremacy. And people of color are too daam suspicious.

Jimmy Carter became president of a country, the USA, which is guilty of great and terrible sins, particularly against Native Americans, but also against people of African descent. It was not possible for Jimmy Carter to undo all the wrongs that had been done, because that would have involved turning back the clock.

But Jimmy Carter stepped to the plate and delivered where he could. He delivered for Belize, big time. As proved at the United Nations, every nation in the world, except for Guatemala, knows that their claim on Belize exists only because they have a big army and they want to bully. Bully is a nice word. Those people murdered 200,000 of their own, mostly because they aren’t white.

Jimmy Carter is an Evangelical, but he has true compassion. I say that because some of these Evangelicals are very ruthless. They are anti-abortion. Okay, everybody is. But they are also against a woman’s right to decide. They are against male homosexuality. Okay, nobody wishes such a twist on anyone. But they are also against a male homosexual’s right to a closet. Understand, in this paragraph “against” is a euphemism.

The world owes a big thank you to Jonathan Alter, who is writing a biography of the life of the wonderful man. Alter told Yahoo News, in a piece titled,”Jimmy Carter: Staking his reputation on a dream of Mideast peace” about “Carter’s defining moment of presidential leadership: his decision to risk his reputation and personally broker a peace deal between Egypt and Israel.”

Alter told Yahoo News that when Carter took office, “the Israelis and the Egyptians had fought four wars in the previous 25 years,” and Egypt and other countries didn’t “recognize” that Israel had the right to exist. He said that the”only army that could actually destroy Israel was the Egyptian army, and Carter took the Egyptian army off the table. Not a shot has been fired in the 40 years since.”

Alter spoke of the difficulties Carter faced to get a peace treaty. First he couldn’t get Egypt’s leader, Anwar Sadat, and Israel’s leader, Menachem Begin, on page. On the advice of his wife, Rosalyn Carter, who thought that if he got the men away from the region he could make more progress, he got them to visit with him at Camp David, in Maryland USA.

Finally, after 13 days, they got a deal, but then some months later it fell apart. At this point, for the good of the world, Carter took the risk and went to the Middle East to bring the men back to the table.

Alter tells Yahoo News that Carter “goes first to Jerusalem and then to Cairo. And they actually get to the final treaty — the most successful peace treaty since World War II. With that, Jimmy Carter showed that presidential leadership is indispensable for the country — and for the world.”

Jimmy Carter is a great, great hero, and we in Central America are direct beneficiaries. Carter signed a treaty to end US ownership of the Panama Canal; he saw that Belize deserved nation status with all our territory, and he gave us his country’s vote; and he brought pressure on Guatemala to end the murder of native Guatemalans.