Sergei Guriev – Russian Economist

Thanks to BBC Hardtalk and improved technology, the interview can be heard until 7 days hence:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p019zqkd

This interesting interview reflected many of the realities of Guyana although not as significant on the world scale.

So Mr Guriev felt the third time might not be so lucky when the secret police come knocking at the door, as he made the mistake of commenting on the second case of the (Putin's)State vs Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the jailed oligarch who fell afoul of prime minister Vladimir Putin. Mr Guriev claims that he gave an economic viewpoint that any economist would have, that apparently displeased Mr Putin.  The legal system that served a warranty to take away Mr Guriev's emails for the past 5yrs being a mere rubber stamp and perhaps 'they' wanted to see if there was anything in there that was critical of Mr Putin's third term bid.  The Americans at least read all your emails and don't seem so intimidating unless like Mr Snowden, you tell the rest of the world/country that that is what they are doing!

So as the interview progressed so did the parallels to Guyana - 37% of 18-35 yr old Russians want to leave the country which means the country will lose Time and generations of talent necessary for development. There is now less freedom and integration in the global economic system, more cash outflow and local investors can see that Property Rights are not protected, Courts not as good as they should be, Competition not developed, protected and promoted.
And although the interviewer pointed out the dropping on the scales of Transparency International and the scale of ease of doing business, I thought his reply was good that - my words- the country wasn't living up to someone else's judgment but in fact had to address the challenges of decreasing good governance, infrastructure and educated labour force. My past year of learning Health Economics came in handy as I actually understood what he was talking about, especially when he mentioned revealed preferences - what I learnt as a method of assessing a benefit of an intervention - but simply put- voting with your feet!

Air Pollution

From my out-dated textbook (2006) - 'Air is considered polluted when it contains any extraneous constituent in sufficient quantities to adversely affect the environment or the health of people exposed to it'.

The legal/illegal burning of the forests in Sumatra have released sufficient particulates to affect visibility in Singapore, even to the extent of the Singapore Government considering a cease-work order as the current advice is to stay indoors as much as possible. I thought I heard the BBC say that the Indonesian government told the Singapore government, following a complaint, that it is very likely Singapore companies were benefiting from that activity in their forests so quit whining -- but I was half-asleep and must have imagined that part!

So 'clean' Singapore will have to do a mass 'clean-up- in a few weeks as three weeks or so worth of burnt  organic matter will not be a fun activity to clean up. More to the point-- what effect would breathing in particle-laden 'air' have on people's lungs? And should anyone be culpable?  Health Economics refer to this as a negative externality-- Peter paying for Paul and not getting any benefit from the activity occurring elsewhere.
Back in the 1980's Scandinavia suffered from destruction of their forests from 'acid rain' resulting from chemical by-products from Industry in North America drifting across the Atlantic and causing damage to vegetation and buildings.
California and Mexico have taken to installing stations distributing oxygen at street-corners to over-come the breathing problem some people might face: seems like an extreme solution and wouldn't it be better to address the things causing the problems in the first place?

Back in Guyana, I was informed by my neighbour that it is now forbidden to burn garden waste and that the Local Council is quite strict about reinforcing this-- shame they didn't seem to notice a radiation-emitting tower thrown up overnight in the playing-field down the road- but the fact that it was by a company run by the President's son may have something to do with the selective blindness! I note that the UNDP saw it fit to send the same son on a trip to Rwanda on solid-waste management exercise-- mmm, yes -that is totally in keeping with e-governance  - concern for the environment, health and sustainable development.
So there is now an accumulation of oversized branches building up near the trench behind my house and creating nice pockets for breeding mosquitoes-- nice move you clowns-- run and institute a rule without thinking it through!

However in Georgetown where nothing works as it should-- a mad German has taken to burning rice-paddy in the limited yard space next to my good-natured and long-suffering mechanic. I dropped the car off and stood chatting with him for a few minutes and came back with my clothes reeking-- there is a odd pipe emitting smoke continuously out of the smoldering heap -- where are the authorities concerned about the environment now? Maybe I should tell the mechanic to call the EPA but being a true Guyanese he would die before he does that and probably think as most Guyanese-- they wouldn't do anything anyway.

Love by Toni Morrison

After an irritatingly slow and confusing start and a brief laying-aside period, I returned to the book as an achy lower back had me on the floor with elevated legs. Totally different point of view from the floor!

Her experienced eye on human relations and 'a clear sight of the world as it was - barren dark ugly without remorse' ( pg 132 in the Library's copy I have) had me both laughing and sad, and amazed at her insight : check this out from pg 84 'Some creaky, unhip glossy for teenagers disguised as men that catalogued seduction techniques, as if any technique at all was needed when a woman decided on a man'.

The book was written in a series of flashbacks and centres around the deep friendship between two children and the effect of a strong patriarchal racist society supporting a pedophile, opportunistic grandfather who society holds up as a Pillar of the Community. 
There was a touch of Miss Havisham (from Great Expectations) in Heed, the street-girl made good.
I thought the book did not fully explain the motives of the grandfather in destroying his family and at the end we learn that he willed the business and house to his favourite roll-in-the-grass but the faithful family retainer intervened to destroy the Will to save the women. I suppose it is a good illustration of how absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The Black Robe-- Canadian Film

This was a film shown at Castellani House while I was in exam panic mode and luckily got a copy to view.

It is a beautifully shot film showing off the wonderful scenery of Canada-- wide open spaces and lakes.
The film itself referred to the Jesuits- the Blackrobes- whose mission it was to 'save' the souls of the Indians -- it was very satisfying that a few of them got butchered by the savages, although the native (Amer)indian viewing the film with me was appalled at the violence and it was with difficulty I persuaded her that our local Caribs were just as bad-- she was relieved that her Arawak tribe wasn't so bad.
She and I were interested about the belief in dreams and I paused the DVD to tell her about Segu (http://gtobserver.blogspot.com/2012/08/segu-by-maryse-conde.html) where the African tribes also intuitively believed that dreams were omens and needed an experienced shaman to interpret them. I also told her that her ancestors originally came from Africa-- went up to eastern Europe, crossed over by Alaska and then made their way down to Guyana - so maybe the belief in dreams was a traditional thing that got wiped out with the 'scientific' Europeans who 'won' and wiped out everybody else's belief?
It was interesting that the tribe that interacted the most with the white men got wiped out and the leader/father says sadly at the end that he was just as stupid and greedy as the white men - and that they got dependent on the white men to provide 'things' - we had an interesting discussion about the relevance of that statement to today's Guyanese-- or maybe I was doing most of the mouthing off?
Sex doggie-style seemed to preferred way.

Drown by Junot Diaz

Having been temporarily engaged into other reading, this was the welcome book back to the Bookclub-not!
A totally depressing one at that-- who's choosing these books?
It is basically about a low-life's journey to America- Nueva York with flashbacks in his father's life. Unlike the Haitian journey of Edwidge Danticat, this book would lend itself well to the argument of stopping immigration to the US from poor Caribbean countries as they - the immigrants- are so screwed up with aimlessness by the time they get to the US they are basically lost causes and just add to the misery boiling up there in the Pot.
The misogyny and bullying of those perceived to be weaker follows the Law of the Jungle philosophy and having no sympathy with the characters wondered about the rave reviews on the back cover.

Wrong in so many ways!

I sometimes wonder how Guyana keeps going in the face of   ‘de small man doing he ting’.

My mind jumped to the 60 yr old woman who along with numerous others had been squatting (illegally) for some time in the flight path of the smaller local airstrip at Ogle apparently since 1992, in spite of numerous house-lots being made available at low cost.

So about ten days or so ago, the inevitable happened—a small aircraft crashed in her house after engine failure and being knocked off-track by the top of a coconut tree. The papers apparently omitted to say that the 71-yr old American pilot, clearly suffering from massa-syndrome, shrugged off the local engineers’ warning that the plane was un-flight-worthy as it was his personal aircraft which he flew down from Florida where his company was based. Apparently the morning run proved ok but he pushed his luck during the second afternoon flight and for some reason – probably male arrogance – did not return immediately when one engine failed and apparently didn’t switch over to the other engine in time and fell on the woman’s house.

Which begs the question of why would someone want to go to the trouble of getting in a foreign pilot unfamiliar with the territory to fly over Guyana’s interior air-space, notorious for not adhering the GPS specifications – apparently mountains appearing suddenly out of the mist. A similar tragedy happened last year with some gadget-loaded plane – you think ‘they’ would learn? There are two or three local flight companies—surely it is better to pay them and be safe or at the very least—pay a local pilot to assist?

Then begs the question of who pays for the house and why should they as the woman is there illegally?  Apparently the spineless Government, missing a good opportunity to say ‘I told you so’ found a spare house in the area to lodge her, until they sort out if the man’s insurance will cover her costs—fat chance in hell I would have thought— but then who gave the man permission to fly over Guyana’s airspace without making sure all the technicalities were in place? Oh – could it be the Government trying to cover their backside in a dodgy Amelia Falls project? What a wicked web we weave when first we practice to deceive…

Think.Eat - Save?

Funny how things happen by chance - read a notice in our local paper that the UN designated 2013 as the Year of Quinoa and then a Facebook friend sent a notice of a Blog competition on the World Environment Day's theme of reducing your foodprint. Ironically will be doing an exam on Public Health which covers this topic -Environment, Health and Sustainable Development at the same time the host country will be giving out the prizes!
So my first thought when I read about Quinoa being chosen was something I had read about the poor peasant women in the Andes who were showing signs of mal-nourishment as their staple food was being flown to be the new trendy food of Health food enthusiasts of the World and the question of the amount of food miles of flying the super-grain from the Andean region in South America to the tables of the developed world being sanctioned by the UN raised my eyebrows:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/16/vegans-stomach-unpalatable-truth-quinoa
Quinoa for those who don't know is a nutty-tasting grain originating from the Andes which has no gluten, a high concentration of amino acids along with trace elements and vitamins. Like our local farine, it fuels the system of the indigeneous Indians to work for long periods. Its journey to our tables is an interesting example of the globalisation of food production.
Apparently the grain is very adaptable to different agro-ecological regions and can be grown from areas with relative humidity of 40 to 88% and from low-lying areas at sea level to 4000m above sea level and in temperatures from 8 to 38 degrees Celsius. So it's only the ecological balance that would need to be taken into consideration and a way of keeping the major Agro-Food-manufacturers from thinking of a way to captialise and monopolise the market. So far, it seems the only other place growing the grain on a commercial scale is Colorado in the United States, which means the Andean farmers have seen a tripling of the price of their crop since 2006 - leading to increases in the export market and driving down consumption in the local market where it was reported to leading to  increasingly substitution of the more unhealthy Western diet of  'junk food'. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jan/25/quinoa-good-evil-complicated
This is a good example of risk transition - when an increase in modern risks like obesity due to unhealthy calorie-dense foods increase while the traditional risks partly due to poverty recede with increasing economic development.
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation sees this grain as an important contribution towards food security and achieving the first Millennium Development Goal of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger. A recent article http://www.stabroeknews.com/2013/features/02/26/the-food-threat-to-human-civilisation/ noted that with increasing population 'All inputs needed to feed each additional person will, on average, come from scarcer, poorer, and more distant sources, disproportionately more energy will be used, and disproportionately more greenhouse gases will be generated.'
While the production of a vegetarian protein-rich food is more sustainable in the long run compared to meat production, it was reported in the second article above that other traditional sustainable forms of agriculture are being sacrificed by the mass production demands for quinoa, already upsetting the ecological balance involving soil fertility and llamas. It remains to be seen what effects introducing a new plant to a different ecosystem in order to cut down the carbon footstep,will produce.